


Down Dog

by spaceburgers



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Broadway Actor Sylvain, Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, New York City, Yoga Instructor Felix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23773990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceburgers/pseuds/spaceburgers
Summary: Wherein Sylvain (literally) twists himself into knots trying to win Felix's heart. Or, the one where Felix is a yoga instructor and Sylvain won't stop trying to get into those skintight pants.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 87
Kudos: 669





	1. cat/cow

**Author's Note:**

> quarantine made me write this!!!
> 
> disclaimer: i am neither a yoga instructor nor even vaguely good at yoga. i am also not a doctor. don't take medical advice from horny fanfiction on ao3 dot org.

It all begins on an otherwise ordinary Thursday night, made exceptionally unordinary when Sylvian falls off the edge of a raised platform and directly onto his left shoulder, right in front of a full Broadway house of just over a thousand people.

The platform isn’t even that high, probably a solid four feet above the ground. Sylvain’s walked, run, jumped, and danced on this platform hundreds of times, to the point where he barely even needs to look now, running on sheer muscle memory rather than on any kind of conscious thought – which, now that he thinks about it, was probably the problem in the first place.

That’s the first thought that runs through his mind upon impact, shortly followed by _oh shit, that actually really hurts_ , and then _oh shit, I’m on stage in the middle of a show_.

Then the curtains are being pulled across the lip of the stage, and their stage manager’s voice is booming across the entire theater on the emergency PA system. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, her voice as calm and steady as ever, “please wait in your seats while we assess the situation. The show will resume shortly, and we thank you very much for your patience…”

“Ow,” Sylvain says, trying to sit up through the searing pain radiating from his shoulder. In an instant his scene partner – sweet Olivia, bless her heart – is by his side, supporting his back and trying valiantly to pretend like she isn’t freaking the fuck out, even though she so clearly is.

Then the rest of the ensemble is on him too, and so are the assistant stage managers, and then the rest of the night passes in one big blur that ends with him back in his apartment while Ingrid, his childhood friend and roommate, levels him with her most unimpressed gaze as he explains the whole ordeal to her. Clearly he isn’t scoring any pity points off of her, which is just so unfair, considering he has a dislocated shoulder, an embarrassment that will probably plague him for the rest of his career, and strict orders not to go back on stage for another two months.

“ _Two whole months_ , Ingrid,” Sylvain groans.

“If you didn’t want to be put out of work, you should’ve been more careful in the first place,” Ingrid fires back, as if the injury was in any way Sylvain’s fault at all.

“I’m calling Dorothea. She’ll understand,” Sylvain says. Dorothea is Ingrid’s girlfriend, and a musical theatre actress too. He’d been the one to introduce them, actually, and now they regularly gang up on him in his daily life. No good deed goes unpunished, truly.

“Go ahead,” Ingrid says, shrugging, so Sylvain pulls his phone out of the pocket of his jeans with his undamaged right hand and dials Dorothea’s number, putting her on speaker so Ingrid can listen too.

“Sylvain,” she says, picking up on the first ring.

“Oh, my lovely Dorothea, you will not believe what happened to me tonight—” Sylvain begins, but Dorothea interrupts him before he can launch into his full sob story.

“I already heard,” she says wryly.

“Shit,” Sylvain says. Damn the Broadway rumor mill. There are no goddamn secrets in this city, he thinks sourly. “Okay, well, in that case I’ll just skip to the real reason why I’m calling, which is that Ingrid is being a terrible and unsympathetic friend, and I need you to back me up.” Ingrid snorts ungracefully in the background, and Sylvain elects to ignore her.

“Sylvain,” Dorothea says. “I’m sure it was a horrible accident and I’m so sorry that you won’t be able to perform for a while,” Sylvain makes direct eye contact with Ingrid, grinning triumphantly, “but Ingrid’s right, you really should’ve been more careful. This is what happens when you let yourself go on autopilot – you should know better! What exactly did they teach you at Carnegie?”

Ingrid is smiling way too smugly, and Sylvain has to turn away from her so he doesn’t have to look at her stupid smug face. Childhoods friends are _worthless._

“Okay, now is really not the time for another one of your Carnegie digs,” Sylvain says. It’s a regular point of contention between them – Sylvain had done a fancy four-year musical theatre program at Carnegie Mellon, while Dorothea had forfeited college entirely to try and make it in New York right out of high school, mostly because she hadn’t been able to afford it; consequently, she will never, ever let Sylvain forget that he’s a privileged little upper-class twat at heart who rode his enormous family wealth like a one-way ticket straight to Broadway. Sylvain usually lets her get away with it because he really does deserve the ribbing, but the painkillers are starting to wear off and his shoulder aches like a bitch, so he thinks he’s allowed to be just a little bit crabby tonight, given the circumstances. “Good night, Dorothea,” he sighs, about to hang up on her.

“Wait,” Dorothea calls, before Sylvain can actually do it. Her voice changes then, gentling as she continues speaking. “Okay, I’m sorry for teasing – how is your shoulder? How are you feeling?”

“It hurts, but I’ll live,” Sylvain replies, bruised feelings instantly dissipating under the quiet warmth of Dorothea’s concern. “I don’t know what I’m going to do for the next two months.”

“Maybe it’ll actually be nice, not having to live that eight-shows-a-week lifestyle for a while,” Dorothea suggests.

“Maybe,” Sylvain says, but he really isn’t so sure.

* * *

The two weeks of no work is fine. Fun, even. Sylvain sleeps a lot, cleans out his room of junk, sees a whole slew of other Broadway shows (including the one Dorothea’s currently in), goes to bars, and is pleasantly surprised to discover that having a sling does not, in fact, impact his ability to pick up people at all.

After two weeks Sylvain’s doctor says he can gradually wean himself off the sling, which is a relief, but that doesn’t change the fact that Sylvain is starting to grow bored out of his mind. He just isn’t used to all this free time – he didn’t realize before just how much the structure of the eight-show week has regimented his life, and without it he feels strangely bereft. Plus, Ingrid’s been too busy with work recently to really hang out with him – she got promoted a few weeks ago at the non-profit she works at, a mid-sized organization based in Midtown East that’s trying to combat food deserts all across the tristate area. It’s work that Ingrid’s passionate about, and Sylvain is happy for her, but it kind of sucks when your best friend is barely around anymore, especially when Sylvain has nothing but free time and an abundance of excess energy on his hands.

And so he decides to do what he always does in moments in crisis: he gets coffee with Mercedes.

He met Mercedes at one of the lowest points of his life: it was the year he graduated from college, the year he decided to come clean to his dad and admit that he’d been lying this whole time, that he’d dropped out of the Business Admin program a long time ago to pursue a major in Musical Theatre, and that he wasn’t going to be moving back home to help run the family business in Boston after all, that he was going to move to New York City instead because he’d been secretly going to auditions for the past year and had finally landed an understudy role for a small off-Broadway production. Sylvain’s father had responded by immediately cutting him off from the family fortune, but not before informing him what a disappointment it was that both of his worthless sons had turned out to be complete failures in life – never mind the fact that Miklan was literally in jail for a whole host of felonies, and the only crime Sylvain was guilty of was not wanting to follow in his father’s miserable footsteps – and Sylvain hasn’t spoken to him since.

So there Sylvain was: new to the city, a shitty apartment in Queens with three former classmates from Carnegie (two of whom were in an ugly on-again, off-again relationship and would not stop fucking in the living room when they were on and having screaming matches in the hallway when they were off), having to juggle his acting gig alongside a day job as an SAT tutor for bratty high schoolers who would pay Sylvain extra if he did their homework for them, and wondering if maybe he should’ve just sucked it up and gone back home to Massachusetts after all.

That’s when he met Mercedes – by total accident, actually. He’d been at a gritty dive bar in Brooklyn, the kind that tries to pretend it isn’t totally gross by adding an abundance of hipster wall décor to hide the fact that the paint is peeling off the walls, and spotted a woman with a pale blonde bob sitting at the bar, sipping on a gin and tonic.

Sylvain, being Sylvain, immediately sidled up to her and asked if he could buy her a second drink. The woman smiled at him and informed him that she had a girlfriend, but instead of politely telling him to fuck off she invited him to sit down with her, and before Sylvain knew it he was telling this random stranger at a bar his entire sob story over the course of several rounds of drinks, and the woman – who introduced herself as Mercedes, or Mercie for short – told him about her own life in turn, her abusive stepfather and a half-brother she hadn’t seen in years, and instead of inviting her over to his place at the end of the night Sylvain just drunkenly hugged her on a street corner and told her she was the kindest person he’d ever met, and now, more than four years later, she’s still one of Sylvain’s best friends.

The reason why all this is relevant to the story is because, upon meeting up for coffee after Sylvain’s dramatic on-stage shoulder injury, Mercedes is the one who says the following fateful words to him: “You should come for yoga classes at Annette’s studio.”

Annette, Mercedes’s girlfriend, is a tiny redhead who is perennially clumsy in all aspects of her life except for when she’s on a yoga mat, which is when she suddenly becomes as graceful as any Bolshoi ballerina. She’s been running a small yoga studio in the Village for the past two years now, and has actually been pretty successful. Sylvain doesn’t know her all that well, but redhead solidarity is a powerful bond that can never be broken.

Still. “I don’t know if yoga is really my thing,” Sylvain admits. His only experience with yoga was a batty acting teacher in college who liked starting all her classes with half-hour long yoga exercises, and the only thing Sylvain really remembers from it is how to get into downward dog, and her raspy voice telling him to _connect with his spirit_ , whatever that means. “And besides, the doctor said I should try to avoid putting too much pressure on my shoulder for the next couple of months.”

“Annette works with a lot of clients recovering from injuries,” Mercedes says sunnily. “She does private classes so she can help you do modified poses. Plus, I’m sure she’ll give you a discounted rate if you ask nicely.”

Truthfully, Sylvain still isn’t totally convinced, but Mercedes looks so excited about the whole thing that he can’t bear to say no.

“Well,” he says tentatively. “I guess if there’s a discount involved.”

* * *

And so that’s how Sylvain finds himself standing in the lobby of Azure Moon Yoga, the name of the studio emblazoned in sleek white font on the wall behind the reception counter. The receptionist, a chirpy young man with gray hair swept behind one ear, gives Sylvain a form to fill out upon learning that it’s his first time here, and instructs him to wait on one of their plush armchairs.

Sylvain makes quick work of the form, which appears to be a standard liability waiver disguised as a peppy questionnaire (“Do you have any prior experience with yoga?” Nope. “What other forms of exercise do you do?” Sex, mostly. “What do you hope to get out of your yoga practice?” To be able to get back on stage as soon as possible. “What’s one yoga pose you’d like to master?” Absolutely no clue). A handful of people walk into the lobby as he writes, all of them walking down the hallway and disappearing into one of the studios before Sylvain really has time to check any of them out, which is a shame.

It takes another few minutes after he’s done with the form for Annette to appear, dressed plainly in a white tank with turquoise-colored leggings, her hair pulled back into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. She smiles wildly when she sees Sylvain, walking over to him immediately.

“Hey!” she chirps, friendly as ever. “How are you? How’s your shoulder?”

“Not too bad,” he replies, shrugging nonchalantly. “It’s seen better days.”

“Well, we’re here to fix it,” Annette says, and she sounds so assuring that Sylvain magically finds himself relaxing instantly. If she and Mercedes ever have kids, they’ve going to be one hell of a well-adjusted bunch.

It’s all business with Annette. She takes Sylvain’s form from him, doesn’t laugh or even crack a smile at some of his more smart-assed answers, then gives it back to the receptionist before leading Sylvain down a hallway and into small room, lined with mirrors all along one side and with two matching yoga mats already laid down on the ground, perfectly parallel with each other.

“I’m going to walk you through a restorative sequence to help strengthen your general shoulder area, but with some of the poses modified so there won’t be any strain on your injury,” Annette explains, sitting down cross-legged on one of the yoga mats and motioning for Sylvain to do the same on the other. “I’m not a doctor, so if your shoulder starts hurting at any point you have to stop and tell me. Don't try to be a hero, okay?” She says the last part with an extra firmness that Sylvain can’t help but laugh at.

“Do you get a lot of guys who come in and end up hurting themselves because they refuse to admit that they’re not actually as fit as they think they are?” Sylvain jokes.

“Yes,” Annette replies, and the way she says it makes him shut up immediately.

What follows are the most humbling forty-five minutes of Sylvain’s life. Sylvain’s always thought of himself as a pretty athletic guy. He’s no Olympian, but he literally makes a living off of having to keep his energy levels up for two and a half hours six days a week, singing and running and dancing with minimal breaks in between. True, he’s never considered himself to be much of a dancer, and he doesn’t dance all that much in the show he’s currently in (apart from the one number where he has to do a bunch of jumps, which is how he ended up with his shoulder injury in the first place), but the point is that stamina is crucial to his profession. Not to mention generally being a hot person, which means regular visits to the gym and posting the occasional sweaty post-workout photo on Instagram just to keep his fans on their toes.

All this to say that Sylvain assumed – he made an _educated assumption_ , okay, based on the facts at hand – that yoga wouldn’t be that hard. Yoga’s just a bunch of glorified stretching, right? Yoga therapy, in particular, is supposed to be easy, right? It’s just paying an exorbitant amount of money to have someone tell you to touch your toes, right?

Wrong. So, so wrong.

“And now we’re going to flow into camel pose,” Annette says, and then performs a feat of freakishly bendy magic by arching her back backwards and gripping onto the arches of her feet while staying kneeling down, and Sylvain just stares at her because – what? Is the human body supposed to be able to bend like that? “If you can’t go all the way down that’s totally fine, let me demonstrate some variations for you—” and somehow the variation still leaves Sylvain trembling as he tries to hold himself up with the strength of his core.

“Good,” Annette says soothingly, coming out of her pose easily to settle by Sylvain’s side, holding him up with one hand pressed to his back and the other to his abs, a surprisingly sturdy presence given how tiny her hands are. “Do you feel that stretch in your back and shoulders?”

“Yes,” Sylvain grits out. Annette, on her part, doesn’t laugh or even break a smile, although Sylvain knows in the deepest depths of his soul that she has to summon every ounce of that yogi patience not to giggle in the face of his clear despair.

“This pose is great for spinal flexibility and strengthening the back muscles, which is of course linked to the shoulders,” Annette explains, even though all Sylvain wants to know is when he can get out of this pose already.

Eventually Annette decides to take pity on him and starts to help him unwind from the pose, telling him – mercifully – to move into child’s pose. He doesn’t get to rest for too long, though, because then he’s getting back up and into their final pose of the session, something Annette calls fish pose even though Sylvain literally sees no resemblance to the animal in question, and then finally ending the session in corpse pose, which might just be Sylvain’s favorite pose yet.

Annette is the one to break the silence that's fallen over the both of then, pushing herself up into a seat and grinning down at Sylvain, still splayed down on his yoga mat.

“How do you feel?” she asks.

Sylvain considers the question. _I ache all over_ is the answer that first comes to mind, but it’s a weirdly satisfying kind of ache, bone-deep and heavy like a thick molasses coating every single sinew in his upper body. A molasses made of pain.

“Good, I think,” is what he finally lands on. Annette’s smile softens.

“That’s awesome,” she says. “You’ll get better with more practice, I promise.”

Sylvain gazes up at her. She hasn’t even broken a sweat, her hair somehow still perfectly in place despite having just spent the past forty-five minutes contorting herself into all kinds of ungodly shapes.

“You’re a monster,” Sylvain mutters, and Annette finally bursts out into laughter for the first time the entire day.

* * *

After class Annette follows Sylvain out to the lobby, where he pays for the session and sets up his next appointment with the receptionist, whose name Sylvain learns is Ashe. The three of them stay standing by the counter to chat, Ashe suddenly having a million questions for Sylvain when he finds out that he’s an actor on Broadway. Sylvain’s in the middle of trying to explain the plot of the show he’s currently in when there’s a sudden din of voices coming from down the hallway – another class must’ve just wrapped up as well – and Sylvain looks up in the direction of the noise, momentarily distracted.

That’s when he sees him.

A man, probably just about half a head shorter than Sylvain, with dark hair tied up in a messy ponytail at the crown of his head. He’s wearing a simple white t-shirt and a pair of skintight yoga pants that leave very little to the imagination.

Sylvain stares at, in this exact order: the man’s legs, ass, chest, and finally landing on his face.

Whoever this guy is, Sylvain is _not_ leaving without getting his number.

That’s when Annette, the freakish mind-reading demon Sylvain is starting to be convinced she really is deep down inside, raises a hand and calls, “Hey Felix! Come over here and meet Sylvain!”

Hot Yoga Pants Guy, whose name Sylvain guesses is probably Felix, starts walking in their direction, and Sylvain feels his knees buckle, just a little.

“He just took his first class with me,” Annette pronounces, still grinning sunnily. “He’s friends with Mercie!”

Felix just makes a vague grunting noise in response. He clearly could not care less who Sylvain’s friends with, but he’s standing right in front of Sylvain now, looking up at him through his eyelashes. Sylvain’s seen that look enough times on other people’s faces to recognize it now on Felix’s: sizing him up, assessing him. His eyes flicker down briefly to Sylvain’s broad shoulders, and then back up to his face. Okay. So that’s how it’s going to be, then.

“Hey,” Sylvain says. Sure, he’s preening a little, but what else is a guy supposed to do? Sylvain’s never been the type to ignore his basic instincts.

Felix just looks unimpressed. Alright. Sylvain likes a little bit of a challenge.

“Felix is one of the other instructors here,” Annette says, turning now to Sylvain, and there’s a mischievous glimmer in her eyes which means she _knows_ , she definitely knows, and she’s willingly aiding and abetting anyway. Sylvain should leave her a massive tip just for that. “He teaches the advanced classes.”

“How advanced is advanced?” Sylvain asks, going for faux innocuous but probably shooting somewhere closer to the region of straight-up obscene.

Felix raises an eyebrow. “If you have to ask you probably should stick to the basics,” he retorts, and the laugh that escapes from Sylvain’s chest feels punched-out by the sheer unexpectedness of it. Before Sylvain can think of a sufficiently witty reply Felix has already shifted his attention to Annette. “I’m going to go take a shower before my next class,” he tells her simply, and then he’s off, disappearing down the hallway without looking back once. Sylvain watches him walk away, and doesn’t even have the grace to pretend he’s not staring blatantly.

When Felix is finally out of earshot Annette turns to Sylvain, giving him a _look_.

“Please give me his number,” he begs.

“No,” Annette says.


	2. cobra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: copious amounts of alcohol consumed in a party setting, and also a tiny mention of weed.

Everybody loves a comeback. Sylvain Googles himself and finds threads of people – Twitter, Facebook, Broadway World forums – talking about getting tickets for his first show back. They’d only posted the official announcement of his return two days ago. Four years into his career in New York City and Sylvain knows for a fact that every joke ever made about a musical theatre actor’s massive ego is unequivocally and indisputably true, but hey, at least he’s honest about it.

Ingrid walks into their kitchen one morning to find him looking himself up on Twitter, takes one look at his face, and says, “Narcissism is a sin, Sylvain.”

“That’s not technically true,” he points out, but she’s already ignored him in favor of making a beeline to their coffee machine. Fair enough.

In the meantime Sylvain does the following things: he goes back to the doctor, who tells him he’s healing remarkably well and is all set to go back to work right on schedule, provided he doesn’t strain himself too much before then. He keeps going to classes with Annette, every Tuesday and Thursday, and feels like he’s getting run over by a truck every single time, in spite of her best assurances that he’s already getting better.

He also consistently and unabashedly makes a fool of himself in front of Felix.

Sylvain is fully aware that as a human being, there are many qualities he just fundamentally lacks, the preeminent one being the ability to feel shame. It’s served him well over the years, and is precisely what emboldens him to call Ashe upon returning home after that fateful first meeting to ask for Felix’s full class schedule, so that he can line up all his classes with Annette to _coincidentally_ allow him to run into Felix in the lobby twice a week like clockwork.

He doesn’t know what it is about Felix that’s making him go to such lengths. Sylvain’s pursued people before, obviously. He likes the thrill of the chase just as much as anyone else. Usually, though, Sylvain knows when to realize that his effort is a futile one, to call it quits before he puts too much skin in the game. There’s a fine line between trying to win someone over and straight-up harassing them. Sylvain might spend the majority of his time thinking with his dick as opposed to with his brain, but even he knows there are some lines that just shouldn’t be crossed.

But then there’s Felix.

Felix, who will sometimes straight up pretend not to see Sylvain even when Sylvain’s in his direct line of vision. Felix, who manages to answer some of Sylvain’s genuinely innocuous questions in the most incomprehensible of ways. For example:

SYLVAIN: So how did you get into yoga in the first place?

FELIX: The same way you got your shoulder injury, probably.

And then just walked away. As if Sylvain’s supposed to know what the hell that could possibly mean.

But then there are the other facts at hand. Exhibit A: The look Felix gave him the first time they met. If Sylvain shuts his eyes and tries hard enough he can conjure up that look again in his mind’s eye: the intensity of Felix’s gaze, the dark amber of his irises, that brief downward flicker that Sylvain _knows_ he didn’t misread.

Exhibit B: The fact that—in spite of all the snide remarks and the flat-out ignoring and the whole pretense of aggravation, not to mention how obvious it must be that Sylvain’s literally planned his entire class schedule around getting to see Felix in the hallway afterwards—Felix still makes himself available to Sylvain anyway.

It would probably be all too easy for Felix to actually avoid Sylvain if he really put his mind to it. Like, if he just hid out in whatever employee break room exists in the back until Sylvain left, Sylvain would take the hint and they would never have to see each other again.

But that’s not what happens. What happens instead is that every Tuesday and Thursday, without fail, Felix will walk out into the lobby looking perfectly beautiful, hair falling out of its loose ponytail, and of course, _always_ wearing those goddamn skintight leggings that are beginning to feature in some of Sylvain’s more brazen dreams. And he will stand right there and make eye contact with Sylvain, and then he’ll either walk away with the certain knowledge that Sylvain will be watching him go, or he’ll stand there until Sylvain walks right up to him and initiates conversation, and either way, he’s the one in full control of the situation while Sylvain metaphorically trips over his own feet trying to get Felix to express even a modicum of interest, even just once.

If Sylvain were at all interested in psychoanalyzing himself, he’d say something about being a privileged rich boy who has spent his entire life getting the things he wants way too easily, and now he’s found himself unwittingly obsessed with the first real challenge that’s come his way in a long time.

Unfortunately, Sylvain has no interest in anything deeper than a purely superficial level of self-knowledge, which is why the principal thought taking up space in his head is simply _maybe I’m actually just a masochist. Huh._

Case in point: Sylvain is two weeks out from his triumphant return to Broadway. He’s already talked to Annette about it, and they’ve decided that it probably makes sense for Sylvain to go from two classes a week to just one. He’s going to try out Annette’s beginner group class too – as his shoulder gets stronger it’s starting to make less sense for Sylvain to keep throwing his money at Annette in the form of regular private sessions. Their sessions are starting to get more strenuous too, which Sylvain didn’t actually think was possible, and Annette keeps talking about helping him transition from a restorative yoga practice to a more vinyasa-focused one, whatever the hell that means.

All this to say that Sylvain finds himself feeling particularly winded on this warm Thursday afternoon. He’s standing by the reception desk, leaning against it as he chats pleasantly with Ashe, and trying valiantly to hide the fact that just a scant ten minutes ago he was lying on a yoga mat, hair matted to his forehead with sweat, and panting like he’d just run a goddamn marathon.

So when Felix emerges from his usual hallway corner, looking pristine as ever, Sylvain has to weigh the options in his head. He can either try to be smooth and pray to every god out there that he doesn’t end up making a total fool of himself, or he can cut his losses early and make his intentions as blatantly obvious as possible.

Then Felix walks right up to him, brushing a loose strand of long dark hair behind his ear as he does, and Sylvain thinks, _okay. Option number two, then._

“Hey,” Sylvain greets. Standard opener. Felix gives him a look that Sylvain guesses exists somewhere on the spectrum of unimpressed to intrigued. Granted, it’s a pretty wide spectrum.

“How’s your shoulder?” Felix asks. Okay. So today is definitely not a pretending-Sylvain-doesn’t-exist day. That’s a good sign, right?

“A lot better, thanks for asking,” Sylvain responds, leaning more heavily against the counter so that he can jut his hip out to one side. He thinks he hears Ashe stifle a laugh somewhere behind him, but he doesn’t dare turn around to actually check. “But don't worry, I’ll still be coming by for classes, so you’ll still get to see me.”

Felix raises an eyebrow, looking unperturbed. “Thanks for helping me pay rent, I guess,” he says.

Sylvain grins, showing teeth, and then—and maybe Sylvain fully hallucinates this, because he can’t quite believe it himself—Felix smirks back at him too. It’s more of a quirk at the corner of his mouth, really, so small and fleeting that it disappears before Sylvain can even really be sure it’s there, but it knocks Sylvain flat in an instant. There’s a buzzing in his ears and a thrumming in his veins, and if questioned about it later, Sylvain will say that that’s what makes him throw all caution to the wind, common sense and survival instincts be damned, and open his mouth to ask, “What are you doing this weekend?”

Felix’s other eyebrow goes up too. For a long moment there’s nothing but silence, and Sylvain thinks: _fuck, I can never come back here_ again _, and Annette is never going to forgive me, and then Mercedes is never going to speak to me ever again either._

Then Felix finally says, warily, “Why do you ask?”

There’s a look on his face that Sylvain has never seen on him before. He’s not _un_ interested, Sylvain thinks, but his eyes are narrowed in a way that makes him seem dangerous. Like if Sylvain makes one wrong move that’s the end of it, there’s no coming back.

Something Sylvain’s first professional director used to say to him all the time was _tread carefully, Gautier_. Those words come back to him now as he looks at Felix’s face, which is starting to feel oddly like staring down the barrel of a gun.

“I’m just having a small party at my apartment this Saturday,” Sylvain says, thinking fast. “To celebrate my shoulder healing. I already invited Annette, but I was wondering if you wanted to come too.”

Sylvain, of course, has planned no such thing. But at the mention of Annette’s name Felix visibly relaxes – she’s the mediating point between them, of course. With her there it’s safe. No pressure. It doesn’t have to mean anything, unless Felix wants it to.

“I’ll think about it,” Felix says, finally. “Text me the details.”

“Okay,” Sylvain responds, that buzzing noise starting up in his ears all over again. “But I don’t have your number.”

And that’s the story of how Sylvain ends up staring at Felix’s contact on his phone screen for the entirety of the subway ride back to his apartment, while simultaneously steeling himself for the inevitable chewing out he’s going to get from Ingrid.

* * *

All things considered, it could’ve been a lot worse. Ingrid only yells at him for about a minute before she calms down and her inner manager-at-a-mid-sized-non-profit takes over and she agrees to help co-host. Their apartment—a third-story walk-up in Williamsburg—is tiny (duh, it’s New York City), so Sylvain has to keep the guest list small. He ends up inviting a handful of cast members, some friends from Carnegie, other actors Sylvain’s kept in touch with from previous shows, and of course, Dorothea, Mercedes, Annette, and Felix.

Sylvain’s idea of party planning is going to the nearest liquor store and buying as many handles of alcohol as he can carry by himself, which actively scandalizes Ingrid, so to mollify her he goes to their local bodega and gets a giant packet of Tostitos chips with salsa as well. Then Sylvain hooks his phone up to their speaker system and boots up his playlist of early 2000’s throwback tunes, and that’s it. Party: planned. Now all they have to do is wait for people to arrive.

Dorothea is the first to show up, well before the stipulated start time, but that's okay because she’s practically their third roommate at this point. Also, she brings with herself two giant bottles of margarita mix, so her presence is very much welcome. The three of them—Dorothea, Ingrid, and Sylvain—make themselves shit margaritas with too much tequila, and then sit out in the common room waiting for the other guests to arrive. Dorothea forces Sylvain to regale them with the story of how this party came to be in the first place, which makes her laugh so hard that half her drink spills out onto their secondhand leather sofa sourced from Craigslist, and Sylvain’s relegated to grabbing paper towels from the kitchen to clean up the mess while Dorothea continues to laugh openly at him.

“Your reaction seems excessive,” Sylvain grumbles.

“I’ve just never seen you work this hard to try and fuck someone,” Dorothea responds, dabbing at the corner of her eyes with her sleeve.

“Well,” Sylvain says. “They usually come to me more easily.”

“Listen to him,” Ingrid says to Dorothea in a stage whisper that’s definitely way louder than she thinks it is, which is how Sylvain knows she’s already on her way to getting shitfaced. “What an asshole.”

“Hey, I can’t help if the ladies dig this,” Sylvain says, motioning to himself, grinning his best charming, wolfish grin. “And the men, too.”

“Not this man,” Ingrid mutters.

“We’ll see about that,” Sylvain shoots back.

The high-pitched chime of their doorbell cuts across the room, preventing Ingrid from delivering whatever cutting comeback she was about to respond to Sylvain with, and it doesn’t take long before the party kicks into full swing. More guests arrive, the music gets turned up louder, and the booze starts really flowing. Someone sets up a beer pong table, and Sylvain plays a couple rounds just to prove that his shoulder’s all healed up now, thank you very much. Hands are shaken. Hugs are given. Their couch gets pushed against a wall to make space for the tiniest dance floor in existence.

Sylvain’s in the middle of an intense debate with some of his fellow cast members about what the best Sondheim musical is (it’s _obviously_ Company) when the doorbell rings again. It’s been ringing all night, so Sylvain doesn’t even think twice about it as he extricates himself the conversation around him to go answer the door.

“Hey! Welcome to—” he says, flinging the door open, and immediately stops talking when he sees Felix standing in his doorway, dressed simply in a t-shirt with sweatpants, but it makes Sylvain’s heart stop in his chest anyway.

“Hi,” Sylvain says instead, his voice gone much smaller. Felix looks up at him, his expression unreadable.

“Hi,” Felix echoes.

“Thanks for having us, Sylvain!” Annette calls from next to Felix, which is how Sylvain realizes—very belatedly—that Annette and Mercedes have been standing there the whole time too.

“Of course,” Sylvain responds, stepping aside to let them in. Annette bounds in first, drawn straight towards the flashing lights that Sylvain put up for the occasion, followed by Mercedes, who pauses to give Sylvain a quick kiss on the cheek before catching up with her overexcited girlfriend.

Felix remains standing by the entrance, looking unsure.

“Can I get you anything to drink? We have probably every alcohol known to mankind here,” Sylvain jokes.

“I can make my own drink,” Felix says, but not with malice (or so Sylvain thinks), and so he proceeds to lead Felix to their kitchen counter, piled high with various bottles of alcohol and chasers.

“There’s beer in the fridge, too, if you want,” Sylvain tells Felix, hovering in his periphery. Felix just hums contemplatively, considering the array of choices in front of him before seemingly arriving at a decision. Sylvain watches as Felix makes himself a vodka tonic, and then takes a tentative sip. His face scrunches up for a second before it smooths out again, and there’s just something about that involuntary crack in Felix’s usually stoic façade that makes Sylvain’s pulse start pumping in double-time. Sylvain sidles up next to Felix, reaching past him to make himself another margarita. He really needs to be drunker than this.

“Nice apartment,” Felix says offhandedly when Sylvain straightens up again, drink securely in hand.

“Thanks,” Sylvain replies, beaming over his solo cup. “I’d give you the grand tour, but this is pretty much it.” He gestures to their living room/kitchen common space, which is currently mostly occupied by dancing drunk people and the beer pong table, where it appears Annette has formed a team with Ingrid, the both of them looking way too serious about the whole thing.

Felix grunts in response, and then falls silent.

Now Sylvain has to scramble to figure out what to say. Felix is still standing in front of him. He hasn’t moved, although he seems to be watching the ongoing beer pong game out of the corner of his eye. Sylvain can’t tell what he’s thinking. It’s just—Felix is here, isn’t he? He didn’t _have_ to come. Part of Sylvain was half-expecting him to not show up at all. But here he is anyway, standing in the middle of Sylvain’s living room, sipping from a red solo cup, and Sylvain has no idea what to say. It occurs to him just how much he doesn’t know about Felix. And he wants to know, he really does. He just has no idea where to even begin.

“Hey Felix!” Annette’s voice rings out from across the room, competing with the booming bass of the music. “Come play with us!”

Felix snorts, then shrugs at Sylvain as if to say _sorry, duty calls_ , and then he’s walking towards the table in question. “You’re getting your ass kicked, aren’t you?” Sylvain catches him saying, but Annette’s outraged response gets drowned out by the music, and then it’s just Sylvain alone with his third drink of the night.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks.

At least the one consolation is that it’s easy to find a distraction at his own party. He gets pulled into a conversation with Dorothea and Olivia, who are gossiping furiously about a series of upcoming workshops and the big names that are allegedly attached to it, which of course leads to a long discussion bemoaning _the state of the industry_ , and _it’s all about stunt casting and how much cash these big stars can bring in these days_ , and _nobody wants to invest in new talent anymore_ , and _we’re stuck in a dying industry, maybe it’s time to move to LA_ , which weirdly actually makes Sylvain feel better – that and the drink that someone mysteriously slipped into his hands at some point. From there he migrates to the dance floor, and then to the kitchen to grab himself a beer, and then back to the dance floor, where someone hijacks the speakers to play their own mix of 80’s tunes to great success. Apparently theatre parties in your mid-20’s are exactly the same as theatre parties in college: put on some ABBA and everyone’s guaranteed to have a good time.

It gets late. The number of guests starts to dwindle, but the party’s still in high gear. Sylvain moves from conversation to conversation, watching with only partial awareness as his different friend groups merge and re-merge. At some point in the night he finds himself sitting cross-legged on his hallway floor with his head on Ingrid’s shoulder. He thinks he might’ve smoked some weed, but he can’t remember doing it. He just feels it in his limbs. Huh. Weird.

“I think I need to lie down for a bit,” Sylvain says. Ingrid turns to him, her brow furrowed in concern.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Peachy,” Sylvain replies, and then he’s getting up on unsteady limbs to shuffle into his bedroom, which is thankfully only a few steps away.

He flings open the door and there Felix is, sitting on the edge of Sylvain’s bed, staring down at his phone. He startles when he hears the door open, sitting up straighter, eyes going wide before they narrow again.

“Sorry,” Felix starts to say, at the same time that Sylvain blurts out, “I thought you’d left.”

There’s a long beat of silence.

“I’ll go,” Felix finally says, starting to stand up, but Sylvain shakes his head, shutting the door behind him, which at least manages to block out most of the noise.

“No, no, you don’t have to,” Sylvain replies, which he realizes belatedly might have been a weird thing to say. “I mean – what are you doing here?”

Spots of color suddenly appear on the high points of Felix’s cheeks, as startling as the first bloom of spring. Sylvain can’t help but stare, fascinated.

“I just,” Felix mumbles, looking away as he speaks. “I don’t like parties.”

“Oh.” Sylvain has no idea why that hadn’t occurred to him before, that Felix’s earlier uncertainty had nothing to do with Sylvain himself, actually, that it was just the natural reaction of someone feeling out of place. “Why’d you come, then?”

Felix sighs. “Annette begged me to come with her,” he says. “I couldn’t say no to her.”

“You could always just leave,” Sylvain suggests. “Annette seems like she’s having the time of her life.” The last time he saw her she’d been doing shots with his junior-year roommate from Carnegie, so she’s clearly doing fine without Felix by her side.

But Felix just shakes his head. “If I left without telling her she’d be furious, and if I told her I wanted to leave early she’d just get all worried and ruin her own night.” He says it with so much certainty that Sylvain’s convinced those exact scenarios have happened before, multiple times. He wonders about Felix and Annette’s friendship – all this time he’d assumed they were just coworkers who got along well, but now he’s starting to suspect that it runs deeper than that. And part of Sylvain wonders, too, what it must be like to have the full force of Felix’s affection trained on you, to be the kind of person whom Felix would sit, miserable, at a too-loud party for, the kind of person who would inspire that kind of devotion.

“How did you guys meet?” he asks.

“We went to college together,” Felix replies.

“Huh.” The pieces are starting to come together. “Where did you guys go?”

Felix scowls, remaining silent. Sylvain just laughs.

“Come on,” he pleads. “I promise I won’t judge.”

“Yale,” Felix mutters, so quietly that Sylvain almost doesn’t catch it.

“Wait, seriously? Yale?” The disbelief must register in Sylvain’s voice, because Felix’s scowl deepens even further.

“I was on an athletic scholarship,” Felix says, the same way someone might say _I just had my house broken into and all of my most prized possessions stolen_. “If it weren’t for Annette I would’ve flunked out of school.”

“Woah,” Sylvain says. “What sport did you do?”

Some inscrutable emotion flickers on Felix’s face, his expression transforming into something Sylvain can’t quite place. “Fencing,” he replies, after a moment’s pause. Then before Sylvain can say anything else his gaze shifts upwards, to something above Sylvain’s head. “Annette says you’re a Broadway actor,” he says.

Sylvain turns, looking up too, and realizes Felix is staring at his collection of posters from shows he’s done in the past. Ever since his first show out of college he’s had a tradition of getting the entire cast and crew to collectively sign a poster on his last day of any production, and he has the results displayed proudly on his bedroom wall now, a little homage to his past credits.

“Yeah, I am,” Sylvain says. “I’m in the revival of _Anything Goes_ right now.” Felix just looks back at Sylvain like those words don’t mean anything at all to him, which is honestly such a refreshing change of pace that Sylvain doesn’t even mind.

“Did you always know you wanted to do theatre?” Felix asks. The question throws Sylvain off a little – it’s never the first question people ask when they find out what he does for a living. Usually they ask more about the show he’s currently in, or if he knows so and so famous actor, or what his favorite play is, or—if the person asking the question is more of the judgmental type—why not film or TV when it’s so much more lucrative. Sylvain doesn’t think he’s had to answer that question in a very long time.

He takes a moment to think about his answer before he finally responds. “No,” is what he says at last. “I’ve always liked musicals, but I guess I never really thought seriously about pursuing it as an actual career until college.” And maybe it’s the copious amount of alcohol he’s been downing throughout the night, or maybe it’s the way Felix’s eyes gleam as he sits on the edge of Sylvain’s bed, one knee pulled up against his chest, but Sylvain doesn’t even think twice before he goes on to say, “My whole life everyone—myself included—just assumed I’d grow up and then eventually inherit the family business. My dad’s still pissed that it didn’t actually turn out that way.”

He only realizes he’s said too much when he registers the expression on Felix’s face, a complicated mixture of emotions that Sylvain ultimately registers as sympathy, and it makes Sylvain’s stomach turn, to be on the receiving end of a look like that.

“Sorry,” he says, turning away to rub his eyes, suddenly exhausted. “I said too much.”

“No,” Felix says. “I– I get it.”

Sylvain looks back at Felix.

Just then the phone in Felix’s hand buzzes, its harsh glare shocking enough to break the tension that’s suddenly descended between them. Felix looks down at his phone, taking a second to read what’s on the screen.

“It’s Annette,” he says. “She’s asking where I am. I should go.”

“Right,” Sylvain says. He steps back to open the door, and the incessant beat of the music still going strong immediately floods the room. Felix stands, pocketing his phone.

“Thanks for hosting,” he tells Sylvain.

“Yeah,” Sylvain replies. “Of course.”

“See you at the studio,” Felix says, smiling wryly, and then he’s gone.

Sylvain shuts the door after him, taking a second to breathe, like Annette’s always telling him in their lessons. _Inhale through your nose, and then exhale through your mouth._ It does makes Sylvain feel better, just a little bit. God, he’s really fucking drunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last revival of [anything goes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anything_Goes) on broadway was in 2011, but as this is a work of fiction i can build my own damn broadway season. sylvain plays billy crocker, of course.


	3. bridge pose

A list of things that happen in Sylvain’s life within the span of a week:

One: He goes to his first group class with Annette. He arrives five minutes early, purely by accident, and definitely not because he wants to ask her if she thinks it’s bad idea to switch to Felix’s advanced class despite the fact that he’s barely even a beginner. Except what happens instead is that the second he walks in, Annette turns bright red and starts apologizing profusely for the way she acted at Sylvain’s party, which prompts Sylvain to admit, “I have no recollection of anything you did at my party.”

The truth is that his memory of that night is spotty at best. He remembers bits and pieces, fragments that don’t make any coherent sense together: Annette standing at the beer pong table, tongue sticking out in concentration as she goes for her shot; Mercedes and Dorothea sitting cross-legged on his couch, looking downright conspiratorial as they whisper about something; _Lay All Your Love on Me_ being blasted at full volume through his entire apartment; sitting on his hallway floor with his head against Ingrid’s shoulder; the sight of Felix blushing.

He remembers opening his bedroom door to see Felix sitting on the edge of his bed. The conversation they had. That he’d looked at Sylvain with something almost akin to understanding when Sylvain drunkenly decided to allude to his tragic backstory as a runaway rich boy.

Yeah, he mostly remembers the Felix parts of the night. Everything else is a blur.

So now Annette’s looking back at him like she can’t decide if she should be relieved or embarrassed that she inadvertently gave herself away. She eventually seems to settle on the first option.

“Okay,” she says, playing with the end of her ponytail. “Then let’s both forget anything ever happened.”

“Sure,” Sylvain agrees, smiling easily. “We both just had a little bit too much to drink. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Oh, poor Mercie though,” Annette sighs, the tips of her ears going pink. “She was the only one left at the end of the night who wasn’t totally trashed. Even Felix was stumbling a little.”

“Wait really?” Felix hadn’t seemed drunk at all to Sylvain, although maybe that was just because Sylvain had been even drunker. Maybe drunkenness operates on a sliding scale of relativity, and in Sylvain’s fully inebriated state Felix must’ve been the paragon of sobriety in comparison.

“Yeah, Mercie doesn’t look it, but alcohol doesn’t affect her at all,” Annette says, and Sylvain has no idea if she’s being oblivious on purpose just to annoy him.

“No, I mean – Felix. He was drunk too?” Sylvain asks, and there’s an impish look on Annette’s face that instantly tells Sylvain everything he needs to know. Redhead solidarity is a lie, actually.

“Yeah,” she says nonchalantly, as if she doesn’t know that Sylvain’s hanging onto every single word that’s coming out of her mouth. “It’s hard to tell with Felix, because he doesn’t really show it, but when he’s had a bit too much to drink he gets easier to talk to, which is how you can tell.”

“Oh.” Sylvain thinks about the look on Felix’s face again, the way he’d said, haltingly, _I get it_. The thought that he hadn’t actually meant to extend that olive branch, and whatever connection Sylvain thought he’d sensed between them was just a product of too much alcohol – well. Sylvain feels like a complete idiot right now, is the sum of it.

“Hey,” Annette says, probably (correctly) interpreting the dour look on Sylvain’s face. “Look. Felix is a tough nut to crack, but if you can get him to say anything to you regardless of how much he’s had to drink, you’re probably doing pretty well.”

“Really?” Sylvain perks up immediately, which makes Annette stifle a laugh with her hand.

“Yes, really,” she tells him, smiling. “Now go pick a yoga mat, because we’re getting started soon.”

Sylvain’s good mood leads him to select one near the front of the room, and also because hey, he’s an actor, he can’t help his deep and innate desire to show off at all times. People start filing in—most of them women in their twenties and thirties—and Sylvain starts stretching, showing off without a hint of subtlety. Annette definitely sees him do it, which is probably why the next forty-five minutes that follow are the most excruciating moments of Sylvain’s entire life.

It’s humbling, honestly, to be surrounded by a group of women who have no trouble flowing smoothly from pose to pose, breathing gently, faces serene like they’ve achieved fucking nirvana, and all the while Sylvain is red-faced, sweating like a pig, hair matted to his forehead, and summoning every bit of willpower left in his body not to swear out loud. There’s chair pose, which has Sylvain’s thighs trembling so hard he’s afraid he’s going to straight up fall over and smash his pretty face into the ground; boat pose, which induces a full-body shake that makes Annette come to his side to press a supporting hand against his back; and the worst one of all, something called downward facing dog split, where everyone else around Sylvain has their legs straight up, breathing evenly as they sway serenely back and forth, and all the while Sylvain can barely get his leg higher than a ninety degree angle without activating a searing pain that shoots through the entire length of his body.

The session ends up in corpse pose, thank the fucking lord, and Sylvain lies there, trying to catch his breath, as Annette murmurs soothing words about _getting centered on the mat_ (what the fuck does that mean) and _noticing the sensations in your body_ (pain, mostly). His blissful rest time ends when Annette sits up and announces that the class is over, and predictably, she looks entirely unaffected without even a single hair out of place.

At least the other students in the class _look_ like they’ve just been through a workout, even though none of them have their shirts drenched in sweat the way Sylvain does. Sylvain hopes the overall effect is “sexy rugged lumberjack back from a day’s hard work”, but judging from the way some of them keep giggling while shooting looks in his direction, that's probably not the case.

Sylvain goes up to Annette as the other students start filing out. “Are you sure this is a beginner class?” he asks her.

“Yes,” she says, beaming sunnily at him, and that’s that on that.

Then he walks out into the hallway and runs straight into Felix, who must’ve just emerged from a class of his own. He’s slightly flushed, hair coming loose from its ponytail.

“Hey,” Sylvain says.

Felix’s eyes go wide, and is it Sylvain’s imagination, or do his cheeks turn an even brighter shade of red?

“Hi,” Felix says, and then turns around and walks away in the opposite direction.

Sylvain can’t be a hundred percent sure, but he thinks that was embarrassment. Felix, embarrassed. He can’t help it – once Felix is out of earshot, he laughs.

* * *

Two: Sylvain wakes up at noon to a phone call from Dorothea.

“Hello?” he slurs, not even trying to pretend that he wasn’t just fast asleep.

“Syl!” Dorothea yells, so loudly that Sylvain has to move his phone away from his ear. “I got it! The 54 Below slot!”

Dorothea’s been trying to get her own solo cabaret show down at 54 Below for the past year now, which is a dinner club that hosts cabaret performances by Broadway stars on a regular basis. It’s been one of her ultimate goals for almost as long as she’s been performing in New York, and it seems dreams do actually come true sometimes, who’d have thought?

“Seriously?” Sylvain says, pushing himself up into a seat. “Congratulations! When is it?”

“It’s one-night only, a month from now,” Dorothea explains, talking fast as she always does she gets excited about something. “But I didn’t call you just to tell you the good news.”

“Huh?” Sylvain rubs his eyes. It’s way too early for this cryptic bullshit.

“Fine, I’ll cut to the chase,” Dorothea says, clearly taking pity on him. “Do you want to perform a couple solo songs? Maybe a duet or two?”

“Wait, really? Me?” Sylvain rubs his eyes again, as if that’s going to clarify anything. For a moment he’s sure he misheard Dorothea, because – well, there’s just no way.

“Yes, you,” Dorothea replies, and he can hear her laughing over the phone. “The people at 54 Below said I could bring a featured guest if I wanted, and, well, a certain friend of mine has been generating a lot of buzz lately after his dramatic fall on stage in front of a full house…”

“Haha, hilarious,” Sylvain says, before he finally registers everything Dorothea just said. “Wait, seriously? You’d do that for me?”

“Who else would I ask?” Dorothea asks, so blasé in comparison to the warm, bubbly feeling growing in Sylvain’s chest that he distantly recognizes as gratitude.

“Thank you,” he says, quietly.

“Don’t mention it,” she says breezily in return. “Make sure you invite Felix.” And then she hangs up.

* * *

Three: The day after Sylvain gets that phone call from Dorothea, he gets yet another phone call, this time from his agent Manuela, who famously used to be a diva in her own right before she left the stage behind to pursue her newfound passion of helping to find the next generation’s big Broadway star. Jury’s still out on whether or not she thinks Sylvain fits that bill, but at least she’s been pretty successful at helping him land roles so far.

Sylvain barely manages to get a _hello_ in before she interrupts him to say, “They’re casting a workshop for a Company revival.”

The only reason Sylvain doesn’t immediately screech into his phone is because he’s currently in the middle of shopping for groceries at Trader Joe’s, and he really can’t afford to get banned from this establishment because the second closest one is seven subway stops away and he simply can’t handle that kind of distance. It’s just – Company is his favorite show ever. Like, _ever_. Bobby, the lead, has been his dream role ever since he watched a bad bootleg of it in ninth grade. It’s the kind of beautiful, heart-wrenching show that makes you ache from how _real_ it is, not to mention the music is gorgeous, and Sylvain knows he could sing circles around anyone else going up for the role if they just gave him the chance. Although the whole premise of the show is that Bobby’s celebrating his 35th birthday, and there’s no way Sylvain’s landing an audition for that role at his current age.

“I’m too young for Bobby,” Sylvain says, in lieu of the aforementioned excited screeching, despite how obvious that statement is.

“I know,” Manuela says without missing a beat, because they’ve worked together long enough for her to immediately understand his BS. “And besides, they’re doing it gender-flipped, so you wouldn’t be able to go in for Bobbie anyway. Bobbie, with an –ie now.”

“Oh?” That makes sense, honestly. Nobody these days wants to watch a musical about a 35-year-old white guy with raging commitment issues who refuses to settle down with any one of his three girlfriends, even if that’s exactly who Sylvain is probably going to end up being by the time he reaches his mid-thirties. No, his reasons for wanting to play Bobby are purely artistic and have nothing to do with the fact that Sylvain may or may not see the role as a prophetic vision of his future, why do you ask? “Are they flipping any of the other roles too?”

He stands right in the center of Trader Joe’s, leaning over his cart and sending apologetic glances to all the annoyed middle-aged moms who give him death glares while scooting past him down the aisle, as Manuela explains the finer points of the show to him and they decide what roles she should send him in for. They’re turning the three girlfriends into boyfriends too, and Sylvain thinks he would look pretty fetching as a dumb flight attendant bimbo. Manuela evidently seems to agree.

After Sylvain hangs up, he just stares down at his phone for a long time, heart beating in double-time.

* * *

Four: Sylvain makes his comeback.

Evidently, it’s the highlight of his week, because shit, Sylvain really loves performing and everything to do with it. He loves grabbing dinner at midtown before making it to his dressing room for half hour, weaving through crowds of tourists in Times Square to get where he needs to go. He loves doing his rounds, saying hi to hair and makeup, to the stage managers, to the orchestra, knocking on other dressing room doors and popping his head in. He loves the grimy hallways of the backstage area. He fucking loves his dressing room and all the little personal touches he’s put up over the past few months: wall art, lamps, cushions, miscellaneous knick-knacks and lucky charms accumulated from years of school and performing, and the best part of it all is that he gets a dressing room to _himself_ now that he’s a lead actor. Sometimes Sylvain honestly can’t believe this is his life.

When he comes onstage for the first time in months, he’s greeted by an immediate burst of applause. Applause for him, for doing nothing but walking onto stage. And at the end of the show, as he runs up to the front of the stage to take a bow, people get to their feet, the whole theater bursting into cheers and deafening applause. That’ll do something to a guy’s ego.

At the end of the night, as he’s riding the subway back home after a couple rounds of celebratory drinks, Sylvain thinks, _it’s been a long fucking week._

* * *

Given how much happened in that one week, the rest of the month ends up being relatively boring. Sylvain’s honestly shocked at how easily he falls back into his pre-injury routine: hitting the gym, going grocery shopping, doing the eight-shows-a-week grind. And yoga, of course, down to once a week now because anything more than that will put him into a half-vegetative state for an entire day because his muscles will end up aching so much he won’t be able stand up, much less do a full two and a half hour long musical. He’s starting to make friends with the other students in Annette’s class, which is nice, although it doesn’t stop any of them from giggling surreptitiously every time Sylvain curses up a storm under his breath at yet another completely impossible pose.

And then there’s Felix.

Felix seems to get over his embarrassment after a week or so, which means Sylvain’s back to being as blatantly transparent as possible about his intentions, and Felix is back to responding with his usual brand of hostility slash amusement slash complete unreadability. And Sylvain’s not complaining about it, of course, he’s happy enough to have this routine of sorts, but part of him kind of wishes there was more. Shouldn’t something else have come out of that party? Shouldn’t it have been more significant? It still _feels_ significant, to Sylvain at least, even though he can’t help but feel like he took a huge step forward and has now remained in the same place ever since.

It’s also not like Sylvain to mope around like this. He’s a man of action. He’s a go-getter. He lives for the hustle, or something like that. So two weeks before his 54 Below show, Sylvain corners Felix in the hallway of the yoga studio, not even pretending he hadn’t just gotten his ass kicked for forty-five minutes straight, and says, “You should come watch me perform.”

Felix arches an eyebrow. “I’m not a musical theatre person,” he responds, which just makes Sylvain laugh, because Felix’s blatant disregard for his profession is honestly one of Sylvain’s favorite things. The sheer delight Sylvain gets out of Felix knocking him down a peg is something he should probably file away to examine some other time, though.

“No, I wasn’t talking about my show, although you’re always welcome to come by the theater,” Sylvain says, even though he can’t think of anything someone like Felix would hate more than a two-and-a-half-hour long Cole Porter musical. He just seems the kind of person to get annoyed by all the dance breaks and the spontaneous bursting into song, which of course just makes Sylvain want Felix to see the show all the more, but anyway. “My friend’s doing a cabaret-style performance two weeks from now—just singing a bunch of sings at a dinner club, really lowkey—and I’m doing a couple of songs too. You should come.”

Sylvain watches Felix think about it. “How much are tickets?” he asks.

“For you? Free.” Sylvain knows he’s laying it on a little thick, but who even cares? Felix makes a sound that's halfway between a scoff and a snort, so clearly he can’t mind it all that much.

Sylvain waits for Felix to say something cutting, make Sylvain work a little harder for his acquiescence – but instead, he just shrugs and says, “I guess. If it’s free.”

“Great!” Sylvain’s heart thuds loudly against his ribcage, and he grins to mask the sudden jump in his pulse. “Do you know where 54 Below is?”

“I have no idea what that is,” Felix says flatly, and Sylvain can’t help but to laugh out loud again.

* * *

It’s Dorothea’s big night, so Sylvain obviously isn’t going to try and steal her thunder. It’s generous enough of her to let him even perform at all, so Sylvain’s going to be grateful for what he can get: two solos, and “As Long as You’re Mine” from Wicked as a duet because Dorothea secretly wants to play Elphaba one day and Sylvain has been periodically auditioning for Fiyero since college and it’s really only a matter of time before he eventually gets cast. It’s a pretty daunting prospect having to pick just two songs for what technically is Sylvain’s 54 Below debut, but eventually he settles on “Run Away with Me,” because is he really a white twenty-something tenor on Broadway if he doesn’t perform that song at least once, and “Being Alive,” just to prove that he can. There isn’t really much of a rehearsal process to speak of, just a quick pre-show run with the pianist, and then that’s it, and Dorothea and Sylvain are left to their devices as they wait for the show to start. Because they’re them, they grab a drink each from the bar (gin and tonics for the both of them, of course) before settling in the backstage area to wait.

“So did you invite Felix?” Dorothea asks, sipping daintily from her drink.

“Yes,” Sylvain says, more forcefully than he really intends. “He’ll be here.” He invited Mercedes and Annette too, and Ingrid has never missed any of Dorothea’s performances. He assumes all four of them will be seated together. Part of him wonders if Felix and Ingrid will get along.

Dorothea gives him a look out of the corner of her eye.

“What?” he says.

“I talked to him at your party, you know,” she tells him. “Did you know he’s never even heard of Les Mis?”

Sylvain just shrugs, unfazed. “Maybe I like that he doesn’t know anything about theatre,” he says.

“I’m sure that’s what you like about him, darling,” Dorothea replies, patting Sylvain on the knee.

“You’re one to talk,” Sylvain mutters. “Ingrid’s favorite musical is Phantom of the Opera.”

Dorothea sighs her most frustrated, long-suffering sigh of despair. “We all have our own crosses to bear,” she says sadly.

* * *

The performance itself is wonderful. Dorothea kills it, although there was absolutely no doubt in Sylvain’s mind that she would be anything less than dazzling. The truth is that not all musical theatre performers do well in smaller, intimate settings like this one, but that’s not the case for Dorothea, whose natural, effortless charisma has the entire crowd enthralled within minutes. She picks a good selection of songs too, a little bit of something for everyone—solos from her past shows, a Disney medley for fun, big belt-heavy numbers to show off her vocal chops, and a six-minute long Celine Dion song because Dorothea’s Celine impression is honestly impeccable—and all the while she peppers in little anecdotes from her career, stories that make her seem relatable and funny while also incredibly impressive, someone who deserves her present circumstances but also beckons future successes. And honestly that _is_ who Dorothea is, but the fact that she manages to convince the entire audience of that without giving any part of herself away is no mean feat. Sylvain has so much to learn from her.

He’s so absorbed watching her perform that it takes a second for him to realize what’s happening when she suddenly says, “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting kind of tired from all that singing—” Lighthearted protests from the audience ensue. “—so I’m going to take a break and let a really good friend of mine perform for you guys instead. Please welcome to the stage: Sylvain Gautier!”

There’s a loud smattering of applause. Sylvain thinks, _oh, shit, she’s talking about me_ , and then he’s running up to the stage to give Dorothea a big hug.

“Third table to the left, two rows back,” Dorothea whispers into his ear, and then she’s disentangling herself from the hug and walking offstage to let Sylvain have the whole stage to himself. As he adjusts the microphone stand to his height he sneaks a look at the table in question, and sees Felix sitting there, alongside Ingrid, Mercedes, and Annette.

Even in the dim lighting, Sylvain can see that Felix is looking right back at him.

Sylvain looks away immediately, because he really can’t afford to get distracted right now. Okay. He’s got this. He clears his throat before leaning into the microphone and smiling shyly, scratching his cheek for good measure. Sylvain knows he’s good at the whole false modesty thing. People tend to really like it, or so he’s found.

“Dorothea didn’t warn me that there’d be so many of you,” he says, which elicits loud whooping from the audience.

“I know you guys are mostly here for her—” Again, lighthearted booing. Maybe Sylvain should tone it down a little. “—but she was kind enough to invite me here today to sing a couple songs for you all, so I guess I’ll just plunge right into it.”

And so he does. The first song goes well, Sylvain hits all the notes he’s supposed to hit, and the people seem to really like it. Sip of water, quick spiel about Sondheim and Company and how much he adores this musical, and then it’s on to the next one, which he’s decided to treat as an audition of sorts. He lets himself get into it, _really_ get into it, which honestly isn’t hard at all. It’s a breathtaking song, after all, notoriously difficult to sing and even more difficult to fully embody, but he’s also been singing it for the longest time. It feels good, to be singing something that isn’t just part of his job, something that he actually genuinely loves. It feels good to perform. He thinks he does a pretty good job at it, and judging by the volume of the applause at the end of the number, he thinks the audience agrees with him too.

Then he’s inviting Dorothea back on stage for their duet, and then he exits to let Dorothea finish off the performance on her own, and before he knows it the night’s over. Final bows, final applause, and a graceful exit as people start filing out to get on with the rest of their lives. When it feels like they’ve waited a sufficient amount of time for the majority of people to leave they walk back to the main dining area to mingle and schmooze, shake hands and take selfies.

Then Dorothea’s dragging him towards the third table to the left, two rows back from the stage, and part of Sylvain is honestly shocked that Felix is still sitting right there. Sylvain’s pulse jumps in his throat at the sight of Felix, who seems to have actually put on jeans for the occasion.

He turns to Annette and Mercedes first, because it’s way easier to deal with that right now. He hugs both of them in turn, Mercedes first and then Annette. “Thanks for coming,” he tells them, sincerely, before letting them gush over his performance. Then Dorothea releases Ingrid long enough for them to actually talk, and Ingrid hugs him tightly too before returning to her girlfriend’s side.

And finally, when Sylvain’s left with no other recourse, he finally turns to Felix, who’s been patiently waiting this whole time.

“You were good,” Felix says, gruff and short, but it somehow has Sylvain grinning like an idiot anyway.

“Glad you could make it,” he says, and genuinely means it.

They stay together as a group, chatting for a while (Sylvain’s positively delighted to find out that Ingrid and Felix have apparently bonded over their respective insane workout routines) before Dorothea and Ingrid declare that they should be heading back for the night, which leads Annette and Mercedes to decide to return home too. They exit the club and walk together down the street for a block before the two couples head their separate ways towards different subway stations.

Felix doesn’t follow either of them. He just stays right where he’s standing, which just so happens to be right next to Sylvain.

“Heading home too?” Sylvain asks. He doesn’t move either. He knows they’re blocking the flow of pedestrians right in the middle of Times Square, tourists and New Yorkers alike muttering curses under their breaths while stepping past them, but Sylvain can’t bring himself to care. Felix looks good, really good in those jeans.

“Maybe,” Felix says. He looks up at Sylvain, his expression unreadable.

“Yeah? Where do you live?” A particularly aggressive woman shoves Sylvain as she walks past him, but he stands his ground.

“A studio in the Lower East Side,” Felix says.

“Huh.” Sylvain’s heartbeat speeds up. He can feel it in his throat. Felix is still standing right there, just looking at him. “I’d love to see it sometime.”

Felix doesn’t even look fazed. He just blinks, slowly, and Sylvain’s pulse spikes like a motherfucker.

“Right now?” he asks. Sylvain nods, barely even daring to breathe.

“Okay,” Felix says. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Later, Sylvain will have absolutely no recollection of the journey from 54 Below to Felix’s apartment. It’s like he blacks out and only comes to his senses when Felix’s front door slams shut behind him, and then from there it’s like all bets are off. Sylvain growls as he slams Felix against the door, hands sliding under the hem of his shirt to grip at the bare skin of his waist. Felix, not to be bested, reaches for Sylvain’s broad shoulders before attaching his lips to the side of Sylvain’s neck, and Sylvain finds himself blindingly, achingly hard. His hands drift lower, down the curve of Felix’s ass under a layer of rough-hewn denim, and Felix responds by hooking one leg over Sylvain’s waist to pull him even closer, close enough that he can grind himself up against the bulge in the front of Sylvain’s pants.

“Fuck,” Sylvain gasps. “Where’s your bed?”

Felix unlatches himself from Sylvain’s neck long enough to give him a truly terrifying glare that somehow just turns Sylvain on even more. Huh. “It’s a studio, dumbass,” he says.

Now that he mentions it, Sylvain can definitely see the bed pushed up against the wall on the other side of the room. “Sorry,” he says, grinning. “I got kind of distracted over here.”

Felix just rolls his eyes before pushing Sylvain off of him. He walks towards the bed, pulling his hair free from its ponytail as he does, and Sylvain just stays where he’s standing, watching, until Felix turns around to look at him with an eyebrow raised, like he’s saying _what are you waiting for?_

Sylvain almost trips over his own feet as he follows. By the time he gets to the bed Felix has already divested himself of his shirt and shoes, and is now working on pulling off those jeans of his. Sylvain helps him get them all of the way off before tossing them to the side.

“Every time I pictured this happening you were wearing yoga pants,” Sylvain admits.

“Pervert,” Felix says, though he doesn’t sound mad about it, before sitting up to tug at Sylvain’s shirt. “Are you getting naked too or what?”

In truth, Sylvain would be content to just stare at Felix all day, all pale skin and wiry muscle. And those _legs_. Sylvain wants to mark up the inside of those thighs with his teeth, but Felix tugs at Sylvain’s shirt again, impatient, so Sylvain decides to comply. He makes quick work of his clothes, and grins when he sees that Felix has been watching him intently.

“Like what you see?” he asks, because he can’t help himself sometimes.

Felix just makes a vague humming sound in response, which isn’t a no.

“Come on,” Felix says, scooting back on the bed to make room for Sylvain, and so Sylvain goes. He climbs onto the bed, pushing Felix down into the soft mattress to kiss him, and is pleased by the way Felix goes pliant under him, arms going around Sylvain’s shoulders. Felix kisses like someone who hasn’t been kissed in a very, very long time. It’s been a while for Sylvain too. He hasn’t been with anyone since he met Felix, actually, now that he thinks about it, but that just makes it all the more satisfying now that he finally has Felix right where he wants him.

Sylvain pulls away from Felix’s mouth to kiss the side of his neck instead. When he scrapes his teeth against the column of Felix’s throat Felix keens, making a breathy sound that goes straight to Sylvain’s dick.

“Tell me what you want, baby,” he murmurs, breath hot against the spot on Felix’s neck that’s rapidly turning into a bruise. Felix’s grip on Sylvain’s back tightens, nails digging into his skin.

“Fuck off,” Felix hisses, and Sylvain laughs.

“Okay, then how about this,” he says. “I tell you all the things _I_ want to do, and you tell me if you like it.”

Felix doesn’t say anything. He just turns his head to the side, giving Sylvain greater access to the expanse of his neck. Sylvain bites down again, and Felix shivers.

“What I _really_ want to do is bend you in half and fuck you,” Sylvain says, one hand moving down to squeeze Felix’s erection through the thin fabric of his underwear. Felix groans, burying more of his face into his pillow. “Wanna see how bendy you really are. But before that I’ll get you all nice and loose and relaxed. I’ll finger you until you’re a complete wreck and begging for my dick. You want me to do that, baby?”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Felix says. Sylvain squeezes Felix’s erection again, harder this time, and Felix gasps, back arching off the bed.

“Tell me what you want,” Sylvain repeats, more forcefully this time. Felix turns his head to look at Sylvain, and what little of his face that isn’t currently buried into his pillow is flushed a startling shade of pink. It’s actually kind of cute, although Sylvain gets the feeling that he if he said that Felix wouldn’t hesitate to kick him out of his apartment.

“Just do it,” Felix mutters, which is good enough for Sylvain. He grins, lowering his head to mouth at Felix’s nipples, and Felix curses a blue streak as he scratches down Sylvain’s back. It’s obvious that Felix is already wound up tight, but Sylvain isn’t in a rush. He’s happy to take his time, to kiss his way down Felix’s belly as Felix tangles his fingers in Sylvain’s hair, and then lower, pulling Felix’s underwear off so he can lick up the length of Felix’s cock. He makes sure Felix is looking right back at him as sucks the tip of Felix’s cock into his mouth, swirling lazily with his tongue, and then dipping his head lower to take more of him in. Felix bucks up off the bed, putting his fist against his mouth to muffle his moans. Sylvain takes his sweet time, alternating between licking and sucking, and when he decides Felix has had enough he pulls off, pushing himself up to observe Felix’s face. He’s a sticky mess already, bangs matted to his forehead with sweat, chest heaving as he breathes heavily. Good. Sylvain’s going to mess him up even more.

“Do you have lube?” Sylvain asks. It takes a second before Felix gets his bearings together enough to respond. He nods, getting up onto his knees as he rifles through his bedside cabinet. Sylvain sits back, admiring the curve of Felix’s ass before he finally finds what he’s looking for. Felix presses the bottle into Sylvain’s hand before moving to lie back down, but Sylvain drags him back up to sit him down on Sylvain’s lap. Felix gives him a look like he’s saying _what the fuck do you think you’re doing_ , and Sylvain smiles widely, showing teeth.

“I want to see you finger yourself,” he says, and Felix goes even impossibly redder.

“What the hell,” he says. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“I just wanna see,” Sylvain complains, licking the side of Felix’s neck, making him shiver. “You can’t expect me to do all the work here.”

“You’re not cute when you whine like that,” Felix tells him, but he takes the bottle of lube back from Sylvain anyway to slick up his fingers. Felix straightens up, planting his knees on either side of Sylvain’s hips as Sylvain holds him in place securely, broad hands on Felix’s narrow waist. Sylvain watches him carefully as he moves his hand behind him, eyes fluttering shut as he pushes a finger in, slowly, letting out a breathy sigh as he does.

“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Sylvain murmurs, and Felix huffs out a laugh as he buries his face into Sylvain’s shoulder, starting to pump his finger in and out. Sylvain just keeps on holding him, thumbs drawing circles against Felix’s skin as he starts fingering himself more vigorously, pausing only so he can slide back in with two fingers. When Sylvain lets go of Felix he just flops against Sylvain’s wide chest but keeps going anyway, so Sylvain reaches for the bottle of lube, coating his own fingers, and then pushes his own finger in right alongside Felix’s.

The moan that Felix makes – god, it's like an electric shock straight to Sylvain’s system. Felix lets out a long breathy _fuuuck_ right against Sylvain’s collarbone, a wet sob that feels like it got punched right out of him. Sylvain can feel the movement of Felix’s mouth against his skin, the way his free hand scrabbles against Sylvain’s shoulder to find any kind of purchase it can get. Felix is impossibly tight and hot around his finger. Sylvain can’t even begin to imagine what he must feel like around his dick. He starts pumping his finger faster, more forcefully, until Felix gasps, “Sylvain– _fuck._ That’s enough.”

Sylvain pulls out immediately, and Felix collapses back onto the mattress, panting like he’s just run a marathon. Sylvain climbs over him, kissing him, and Felix opens his mouth easily for Sylvain’s tongue.

“C’mon,” Felix says when Sylvain pulls away, “thought you wanted to see how far I could bend,” and lifts his legs onto Sylvain’s shoulders like it’s nothing. Sylvain puts his hands on Felix’s thighs, folding him even further back, and Felix just bends with absolutely no resistance, his knees bracketing the sides of his face. Sylvain swears he almost comes right there and then. He's fucked dancers before, he's even fucked a ballerina from the New York City Ballet, but somehow none of them can hold a candle to the sight of Felix folded in half with a hungry, half-lidded look in his eyes, just waiting for Sylvain to slide his cock into him.

“Holy fuck,” Sylvain breathes, because there really is no other possible response. Felix smirks, as if he knows exactly what he’s doing to Sylvain right now.

“Weren’t you going to fuck me?” Felix asks, spreading his legs wide to give Sylvain full view of his asshole, already stretched open with lube leaking out of it. Sylvain thinks his brain fully short-circuits for a second.

“Getting to it, sweetheart,” Sylvain says, lubing his cock up before positioning himself to kneel between Felix’s legs. He grabs Felix’s thigh as he presses the tip of his cock against Felix’s asshole.

“C’mon, do it,” Felix says. “Just fuck me alread— _ahhh fuck_.” Felix’s words morph into a breathless moan as Sylvain finally pushes in, and god, it feels good. Sylvain sets a punishing rhythm immediately, pounding relentlessly into Felix without a second of reprieve. Felix’s legs start to shake, but Sylvain’s hands stay gripping onto Felix’s thighs, keeping him bent over nearly in double, and Felix can barely do anything but fist his hands in the sheets next to him, twisting his head from side to side as he moans brokenly, his cries growing in volume as Sylvain keeps on fucking him, putting that Broadway stamina into good use. Felix looks so good when he's shaking apart like this, flushing red all the way down to his chest, knuckles going white from how hard he's gripping the bedsheets, like he's being pushed further past his limits with every single thrust. Sylvain slows down so he can thrust harder, so hard that he's slamming Felix against the bed frame, and Felix's back bows off the bed in a perfect, graceful arc. Sylvain sinks his teeth into the sinewy muscle of Felix's left thigh, and Felix practically sobs.

“Fuck, I’m close,” Felix gasps, and Sylvain moves one hand to pull at Felix’s cock, nice and easy, and it barely takes anything at all before Felix is coming with a helpless cry. Sylvain pulls out, finally letting Felix’s legs flop back onto his shoulders, and he jerks himself off in rapid motions as he comes too, all over the inside of Felix’s thighs.

Sylvain flops onto the bed next to Felix, feeling himself coming down from probably the most intense orgasm of his entire life.

“Holy shit,” he says.

Felix opens his eyes to look at Sylvain, but his gaze is unfocused, blinking slow and syrupy. _Fucked out_ , Sylvain’s brain supplies, and the thought of it is almost enough to get him hard all over again.

“Yeah,” Felix agrees, and Sylvain laughs, pulling him into another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> congratulations, you get porn as a reward for sticking through my musical theatre self-indulgence!
> 
> notes:  
> \- [run away with me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoRvnSNCK80), by kerrigan-lowdermilk, popular musical theatre cabaret fare  
> \- [being alive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WkzOywmPPU), the big finale from company  
> \- [feinstein's/54 below](https://54below.com/), broadway's supper club  
> \- [gender-flipped company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_\(musical\)) is a real thing! it was on the west end in 2018 and was supposed to come to broadway this year but then corona happened. rip


	4. triangle

Sylvain Gautier has a problem. The problem is that he can’t stop having sex.

It takes a while for him and Felix to find their groove. The problem, mainly, is how different their respective schedules are: Felix is a freak who gets up at seven a.m. every single day to go to the gym before heading to the yoga studio, while Sylvain never gets out of bed any earlier than eleven, except when he has a two-show day. Sylvain finds this out the hard way, i.e. the morning right after the first time they fuck, when Felix kicks him out of his bed at a generous 7:15. Sylvain’s too sleepy to even be turned on by the sight of Felix standing over him, wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants slung low over his hips.

“Do you want breakfast?” Felix asks, as Sylvain squints blearily up at him. There’s a massive bruise blooming on the side of his neck, and all Sylvain can think about is licking it.

“Are you even awake?” Felix says exasperatedly when Sylvain doesn’t respond, climbing back onto the bed to shake Sylvain by the shoulders. Except Sylvain intercepts him by grabbing his wrist, and he watches as Felix’s eyes go dark and hungry.

“I am now,” Sylvain purrs, dragging Felix back down onto the bed. It takes precisely three minutes before Felix gives up on any pretense of resistance and just lets Sylvain have his way with him. Needless to say, he does not make it to the gym that morning.

After that, it takes some trial and error before they eventually figure things out. Most of the time, Sylvain heads to Felix’s apartment right after he’s done with his show for the night. By the time he gets there it’s already late, but not too late for Sylvain and Felix to get in a couple rounds of freakishly bendy, intensely athletic sex. Then Sylvain either leaves right after, or if he decides to stay the night, Felix will kick him out at 7:30 and he’ll take the subway back to his apartment and then go straight back to bed. Sometimes Felix will come over to Sylvain’s apartment instead, but only occasionally—after all, Felix lives alone, while Sylvain lives with a roommate who’s had to put up with his frequent hook-ups for years now and honestly deserves a break—and when he does, Sylvain will get up just long enough to say goodbye to him before immediately falling back into bed.

Mondays have taken on an entirely new meaning in Sylvain’s life, because Mondays are not only Sylvain’s day off from work, but it’s also the day that the yoga studio’s closed, which means it's the one full day of the week that Sylvain and Felix get to spend together. It also means that it’s one day of bliss where Sylvain actually gets to wake up fully rested in Felix’s bed without getting thrown out immediately. Mondays are good, because Sylvain gets to fuck Felix without being totally exhausted from doing an entire musical right before, which inevitably leads to even more freakishly bendy, intensely athletic sex. Mondays are days for experimentation, and over the course of several weeks Sylvain discovers the joys of fucking on Felix’s kitchen counter, Felix’s couch, Felix’s yoga mat. It’s honestly getting to be a problem, as Sylvain realizes one day when he turns up to work with a massive dark red hickey on the side of his neck, and his dresser takes one look at it, says, “Sylvain, I don’t ever want to get involved in your sex life, but can you _please_ tell your partner to at least do it below the collar,” and then spends the next five minutes trying to cover it up with copious amounts of concealer so that it won’t be visible on stage.

Except the thing is, sex isn’t even the only thing they do together. They’re having a lot of it, sure, but that’s not _all_ they do. Like, sometimes they just sit around Felix’s studio and watch Netflix (Sylvain watches a Fast and Furious movie for the first time in his life and absolutely hates it, so in revenge he forces Felix to watch the first episode of Glee, which ends up being the most delightful forty-five minutes of Sylvain’s life as he watches the look on Felix’s face morph from bored to pained to incredulous to straight up horrified. Afterwards Felix refuses to text him back for a full day, but Sylvain thinks it’s fully worth it). Sometimes they go to the gym together, because Felix is a freak who doesn’t think doing advanced yoga six days a week counts as enough of a workout. Sometimes they go to this Thai place two blocks away from Felix’s apartment, because Felix is in love with their red curry and Sylvain discovers that they also make a mean khao soi. Sometimes Sylvain just sits and watches Felix work on his yoga form at home, which is how he learns that he is certainly not ready for Felix’s advanced classes and will probably never be ready in his entire life. Occasionally he’ll secretly pull out his phone and take videos of Felix effortlessly contorting himself into poses that look like they should be physically impossible, including something called handstand scorpion that Sylvain just _has_ to take a photo of to show Ingrid later, because _come on_. He knows Felix is mostly showing off for his sake, but it’s still one of the most terrifying things Sylvain has ever witnessed in his life. Terrifying, but also kind of a turn-on? Sylvain asks if Felix thinks he could hold crow pose while getting fucked at the same time, and Felix gives him a look like he’s not _not_ considering the possibility of it, but if Sylvain ever brings it up again there will be dire consequences. Sylvain’s getting better at interpreting Felix’s multitude of different glares with each passing day.

Sometimes they just lie in Felix’s bed and talk. The bed sits right against a window, and the way the sunlight hits the mattress in the middle of the day is pretty spectacular. Sylvain tells stories of disastrous auditions he should’ve never even gone in for, onstage mishaps (including the fateful tale of his dislocated shoulder), past directors that were way too full of themselves, even the first couple of truly terrible years in New York, before his career really started to go anywhere. He likes trying to get Felix to laugh, and the few times he did made Sylvain feels as victorious as when he landed that first off-Broadway role years ago. In turn Felix tells him about nightmare clients who think they’re way better at yoga than they actually are, anecdotes from college (most of them featuring Annette), the stray cat that seems to live in the building that houses the yoga studio.

But mostly they have a lot of sex. Sylvain’s okay with that.

* * *

In the meantime, he goes for his Company audition. Sylvain fucking hates auditioning. It’s the worst part of the job, the having to constantly prove yourself to bored casting directors who’ve seen the same shit over and over again, who will barely even remember what you looked like the second you step out of the room. Sylvain loves performing, but auditioning isn’t performance. It’s more like a pissing contest where if you lose you have to go back to working as a waiter at Olive Garden in order to pay rent, and if you win it just means you’re going to have to do the same thing all over again in about a year or so.

Since his second year of college, Sylvain’s had a recurring nightmare that goes like this: he finds himself in an audition room, but he has no idea what musical he’s auditioning for. He looks down at the resume and headshot in his hands, but they’re not his. The pianist will start playing a song he doesn't recognize, and when he opens his mouth to say anything no sound will come out. And sometimes, if he’s been having a really bad time, he’ll look at the panel of auditioners and see his father looking right back at him.

Fortunately, that’s not how his audition for Company goes, which Sylvain figures he should at least be thankful for. Instead it goes by just like how every single audition for a Broadway show Sylvain’s ever done has gone by. He walks in, puts on his best confident-but-not-too-confident smile, sings his sixteen bars, does his side, gets a quick _thank you_ from the casting director, and then leaves. In and out in less than ten minutes. Quick and easy.

Sylvain’s always been terrible at sensing how his auditions have gone, so he tries not to think about it too much once it’s done. It’s hard, though, because he wants this role _so_ desperately, even if it’s just a bit part compared to the leading role Sylvain has right now in Anything Goes. In an attempt to take his mind off things he texts Ingrid begging her to have lunch with him, and she agrees only because he says he’ll treat her to her favorite yakiniku place in midtown.

Thank god for Ingrid, honestly. Sylvain has no idea where he’d be without her. She always knows exactly what he needs, and the second they sit down at their table she instantly launches into a long tirade about the new intern in her department who is, in Ingrid’s words, “the most annoying, over-eager little twerp” she’s ever met, and keeps acting like he knows how to do Ingrid’s job better than she does despite the fact that he’s a nineteen-year-old history major at NYU who comes in to work wearing boat shoes. By the end of her story about how he’d spent the morning trying to recalibrate the office printers Sylvain has forgotten about his audition entirely, and he’s finally able to eat his meal in peace.

That is, until Ingrid pops a piece of beef into her mouth and says, casually, “By the way, Dorothea wants us to plan a double date. I told her that sounds like a terrible idea, and she said that was the whole point.”

“Wait, what?” Sylvain almost drops his chopsticks. “Double date? Like, with me and Felix?”

Ingrid shoots Sylvain a puzzled look. “Um, yes?” she says. “Are you dating anyone else you didn’t tell me about?”

“I’m not dating Felix,” Sylvain says.

Ingrid’s look of confusion shifts into something more disbelieving.

“C’mon, Ingrid. You know me. We’re casual, we’re not actually dating,” he continues. Ingrid stares blankly back at him for a long moment without saying a word. Sylvain’s starting to have a very bad feeling about this conversation.

“What?” he asks.

“Sylvain,” Ingrid finally says, in that tone of voice she only reserves for when Sylvain _really_ fucks up, like that time in college when he decided to cheat on a girl who just happened to be the theatre department head’s daughter, but that’s beside the point. “You see Felix _every single day_.”

“I have an extremely high sex drive,” Sylvain says, which he hopes will disgust Ingrid enough that she’ll drop the subject, but no dice. If anything, she looks even more determined now.

“You spend more time at his apartment than at your own home.” Ingrid’s holding up her fingers now, counting off as she speaks. “You won’t stop talking about him. You get this really stupid look on your face every time you get a text from him.”

“No, I don’t!” Sylvain argues, but Ingrid keeps going like he hadn’t even spoken.

“One time we were at Costco and you bought this gigantic bag of beef jerky, even though you hate beef jerky, and when I asked you about it you told me it was for Felix.”

“He _really_ likes beef jerky,” Sylvain says defensively.

“Sylvain, you don’t look at an oversized bag of beef jerky at Costco and immediately think about the person you’re just _casually hooking up with_ ,” Ingrid insists. “You’ve never done anything even remotely close to that for anyone you were seeing in the entire time I’ve known you.”

And Sylvain’s about to fire right back at Ingrid with another comeback when everything she’s said suddenly hits him all at once. Mostly, he’s thinking about the look on Felix’s face when he’d presented him with said bag of beef jerky—the tiniest smile on his face, like he was trying not to show that he was pleased—and the way Sylvain had grinned so hard he’d felt like his face was going to fall off when Felix took the bag from him, looked down at his feet, and said, in a quiet, uncertain voice, “Thanks.”

“Holy shit,” Sylvain says.

Sylvain has no idea what kind of face he must be making right now, but something about it makes Ingrid’s expression soften immediately. “Oh, Sylvain,” she sighs. She reaches across the table to pat him on the shoulder, but Sylvain barely even feels it. He thinks he’s freaking out. Oh god, he’s totally freaking out.

“Ingrid,” Sylvain says, totally calmly and not at all like he’s currently panicking in the middle of a midtown yakiniku place on a busy Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t even— How do you even _date_ someone?” His voice rises at the end of the sentence, loud enough that the couple at the table next to them shoots him a curious glance. It’s just – look. The last time Sylvain even tried to date anyone was in college, and all those attempts were unmitigated disasters. He’s not ashamed to admit it. He’s had casual flings, friends-with-benefits type arrangements, people that he could reliably count on for a good old-fashioned booty call. He’s never actually liked someone enough to want to enter a—oh god, even just thinking about the words gets Sylvain a little queasy—a _committed relationship_ with them. The second the person he’s sleeping with seems to be developing feelings Sylvain’s out of there. It’s a tried and tested method that’s carried Sylvain well enough thus far in his life; who’d have thought all it would take was a yoga instructor with bendy appendages and a bad attitude to change all that?

Ingrid, at the very least, actually looks somewhat sympathetic to his plight. “It’s not rocket science, Sylvain,” she tells him. “You like someone, you get to know them, and if nothing goes wrong then you stay together.”

“How do you even get to know someone well enough to decide you want to be with them?” Sylvain asks.

“Is that a philosophical question?” Ingrid says.

“I don’t know,” Sylvain admits. “I was just spitballing.”

Ingrid sighs, setting her chopsticks down, which is how Sylvain knows she means business.

“Look,” she says. “You’ve been spending so much time with Felix. I’m sure you guys talk.”

 _We mostly just fuck_ , Sylvain almost says reflexively, except before he can get the words out of his mouth he realizes that that’s not even true anymore. It’s like he’s gotten all the fucking out of his system, and now when he goes to Felix’s apartment after his shows, all he ever wants to do is just lie down with Felix and ask about his day and then go to sleep. Oh shit. Sylvain is so fucking stupid.

“I guess,” Sylvain mutters.

“Okay,” Ingrid says, in her most patient, I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this-on-my-lunch-break-right-now voice. “What do you guys talk about?”

Sylvain thinks about it. They talk about their respective days. They tell stories. Anecdotes from work. Memories from college. They discuss TV, movies. Mutual friends. How terrible the subway is. How much they both hate ridiculous New York City trends, like kombucha and zero-waste grocery stores. Sylvain tells bad jokes in a pathetic attempt to get Felix to smile at him. Felix makes fun of Sylvain for his terrible jokes.

“I guess we kind of talk about the same stuff that you and I talk about,” Sylvain finally says.

Ingrid spreads her hands out and gives Sylvain a look that means _well. There you have it_.

“That easy?” Sylvain asks, a note of incredulity in his voice.

“At the very least, it’s not as hard as you’re making it out to be,” Ingrid replies, and picks her chopsticks back up.

* * *

After they finish their meal and Sylvain walks Ingrid back to her office, he finds himself getting onto the subway line that goes straight to Felix’s yoga studio. All the while, Sylvain’s mind is whirring.

Does Sylvain want to be in a relationship with Felix? Apparently, according to Ingrid, the answer is yes.

Does Felix want to be a relationship with Sylvain? Sylvain has no fucking clue.

Is he supposed to be doing something differently? Is he supposed to try and wine and dine Felix now? Because Felix does not seem like the type to take well to being wine and dined. Neither does Sylvain, honestly. Despite the fact that he’s currently playing the romantic lead in a Cole Porter musical from the 1930’s and spends a lot of his time singing a whole lot of love duets, Sylvain actually has absolutely no conception of romance. What’s he supposed to do, just walk up to Felix and _ask_ how he feels? Shit, just the thought of it is infinitely more terrifying than any audition stress dream Sylvain’s ever had in his life.

But he’s still thinking about goddamn Costco beef jerky. He wants to make sure of something – although what exactly that something is, he’s not entirely sure yet.

He just wants to see Felix. That’s it. That simple.

That’s the main thought in Sylvain’s brain as he takes the five-minute walk from the subway stop to Felix’s yoga studio. Maybe seeing Felix’s face will clarify something for him. Maybe it’ll be like all those movies and musicals Sylvain’s been consuming all his life, where just the sight of Felix’s face will fill him with so much emotion that he’ll magically find all the right words to say, and—

And that’s not what happens, obviously, because Sylvain’s life is not a cheesy classic musical with an excessive number of unnecessary dance breaks. Instead what happens is that he walks straight through the glass doors and is immediately confronted with the sight of sweaty post-yoga class Felix standing in the lobby, smiling as he talks to a tall blond guy with an eyepatch. Even Sylvain can tell straightaway that the look in his one unobscured eye as he gazes down at Felix is unbearably fond.

Something ugly and awful rears its head in Sylvain’s chest. His gut roils uneasily.

“Hi,” Sylvain says. Felix turns towards him, eyes widening when he sees who it is.

“Hey,” he says. “What are you doing here? You don’t have a class, do you?”

“Nah.” Sylvain shoves his hands into his pockets, suddenly uncomfortable, aware that Blond Eyepatch Guy is looking curiously at him too. “I was just in the area and thought I’d come say hi.”

Felix’s surprised expression melts into something gentler, and even in spite of himself Sylvain feels his heart slam against his ribcage. Oh, he’s really got it bad, huh?

“Well, hi to you too,” Felix says, smiling wryly.

“And who’s this?” Sylvain asks, turning to Blond Eyepatch Guy. He forces himself to keep his smile bland and unassuming. Fortunately, he’s a very good actor.

Blond Eyepatch Guy just smiles back at him easily. He looks like such a nice fucking person. Even just his energy exudes guy-who-helps-old-ladies-cross-the-street – it’s in the way he holds himself, so fucking modest and stately even though he’s even taller than Sylvain and built like a linebacker.

“Dimitri,” he says, extending his hand for Sylvain to shake. “Nice to meet you…?”

“Sylvain,” he responds, squeezing Dimitri’s hand just a bit too forcefully. “How do you know Felix?” _How is it that Felix can smile so openly around you, when it took me ages just to crack his shell open enough to catch a glimpse of what’s underneath?_

“Oh, we’re old friends,” Dimitri says, smiling in a way that Sylvian can’t quite read. There’s history there, that much he can tell. “And what about you?”

Sylvain glances at Felix, but Felix isn’t looking back at him. Mostly, he looks like he’s hoping a hole will suddenly open up in the ground so that he can jump in and avoid this conversation entirely.

“I guess you could say I’m a new friend,” Sylvain replies, smiling tightly. Dimitri chuckles.

“Well, I should head out,” he says diplomatically. “But it was nice to meet you, Sylvain.” He turns to Felix, who still looks like he’s trying to will himself into spontaneously combusting. “I’ll see you for dinner tonight?”

Felix nods. Sylvain can’t stop staring at him, at the tense set of his shoulders and his ramrod straight posture.

“Great,” Dimitri says. He reaches out to pat Felix on the shoulder, and that ugliest part of Sylvain is louder than ever. He knows he’s jealous, and he can’t stand it. He’s angry – at this Dimitri guy, who looks so blissfully unaware at the way Sylvain’s insides are churning with rage; at Felix, who still won’t look at Sylvain; at himself, for trying to stake a claim he has no business trying to make.

Then Dimitri’s waving goodbye as he walks out of the studio, and Sylvain and Felix just stay where they’re standing, silent. It’s Felix who breaks the awkward stalemate first, his expression unreadable, but at least he’s finally looking Sylvain in the eye again.

“How was your audition?” he asks. Right. Sylvain’s honestly already forgotten about it. It’s been a long fucking day, and it’s barely even started.

“Fine, I think,” he replies. “How do you know Dimitri?”

Wrong move. Felix’s expression darkens immediately.

“Like he said,” Felix tells him, looking away. “We’re old friends.”

“Then why haven’t I ever met him?” Sylvain asks. He knows he sounds crazy, but he can’t help himself as the words tumble out of his mouth. Felix looks downright furious now, far angrier than Sylvain’s ever seen him.

“Is it any of your business?” he asks, which is just about the meanest thing he could’ve possibly said right then, and Sylvain feels it like a slap to the face.

“Right,” Sylvain says. “I guess not.”

He doesn’t wait for Felix to respond before he turns on his heel and gets the fuck out of the yoga studio. So much for wanting a relationship.

* * *

The fight with Felix messes him up for the rest of the day. Right after Sylvain leaves the yoga studio he heads straight to his gym to go pound out his frustrations on the bench press, but it just makes him think about Felix and his ridiculous gym rat habits, which then makes him think about what a colossal fuck-up he is. He doesn’t stop thinking about it even as he goes about the rest of his daily routine: cooking dinner, heading to the theater, getting ready for the show.

 _I’m sorry. Can we talk?_ Sylvain texts Felix right before he heads on stage, and he’s still thinking about the fight even as he does the entirety of act one. He knows he’s not bringing his A-game today, but everyone has their bad days. He might get a talking-to from his stage manager tomorrow, but he’ll live.

He finally gets to check his phone again at intermission. There’s a reply from Felix.

 _Come over after your show_ , it reads.

Act two goes significantly better.

* * *

Sylvain finds himself unexpectedly nervous as he stands in front of Felix’s front door. He’s sore and exhausted from his show; he doesn’t think he’s fully prepared himself for the conversation he’s about to have, but it’s too late now, because Felix is swinging the door open to let Sylvain in.

Felix is wearing a soft oversized t-shirt that Sylvain’s felt under his hands dozens of times, still devastatingly attractive even just standing there barefoot with his hair down. He’s giving Sylvain an apprehensive look, and Sylvain likes him so much. He really, really likes him. He’s such a goddamn idiot.

“Hey,” Sylvain says, leaning down to give Felix a quick peck, but Felix takes a step back, crossing his arms over his chest. Okay. So that’s how it’s going to be.

“Look,” Sylvain tries again. “I’m sorry for being stupid earlier. I know we’re not—” _Not dating_ , he was about to say, but he kind of wants to be, so maybe that’s not the best thing to say right now. “You’re not obliged to tell me anything you don’t want to,” he says instead. “I was just being stupid and jealous.”

“What’s there to be jealous of?” Felix says, so tight and brittle that it’s almost painful to look at. “We’re just _new friends_ , right?”

Sylvain stops in his tracks. His brain needs to recalibrate for a second. He’s starting to get the sense that he’s been fundamentally wrong about everything, like he’s spent the entire time thinking he was swimming in the full sea, only to suddenly realize that he’s been walking on dry land all along.

“Wait,” Sylvain says. “Is that what you’re mad about?”

Felix looks away. He doesn’t say anything.

“Felix,” Sylvain pleads. “Please talk to me.”

There’s a long silence. The distance between them feels like the widest thing in the world. Sylvain stands his ground, because he knows he should probably give Felix his space right now, but he still finds himself clenching and unclenching his fists, resisting the urge to reach out and touch.

“I don’t want to waste my time with you, Sylvain,” Felix says, and he sounds exhausted. Now that Sylvain’s looking closer he sees how tired Felix looks: the bags under his eyes, the lines on his face. It’s been gnawing at Felix too, Sylvain realizes. He’s not the only one with something to say here. “If this is just some kind of fun game for you—”

“That’s not it, Felix,” Sylvain says. “You’re—”

“Special?” Felix asks mockingly. “ _Different?_ ”

“Well.” Sylvain scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, you are. Honestly.”

Felix finally looks back at Sylvain, his eyes narrowed dangerously. But there’s something else in there too, something fragile, that makes Sylvain acutely aware of how careful he needs to be right now.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Felix warns.

“I would never,” Sylvain says, and is surprised by how genuinely he means it. He walks forward, slowly, like he’s trying not to scare a spooked animal. Felix just watches him, tracking his footsteps, but he doesn’t move away, so Sylvain finally closes the distance, taking Felix’s hands in his to press a soft kiss to his knuckles.

“I was talking to Ingrid earlier today,” Sylvain continues. “She made me realize some important things.”

“Like what?” Felix looks up at Sylvain, eyes still narrowed.

“I’ve never really been in a real relationship before,” Sylvain admits. “I’ve never liked anyone enough to want to try.”

Felix stays silent, waiting.

“But I guess I want to try now,” Sylvain says. He looks down at their joint hands, Felix’s so much paler and narrower compared to his. It makes his chest ache, just looking at those hands. “I’ll probably fuck up, but I promise I’ll keep trying to do better.”

Felix still doesn't say anything.

“C’mon,” Sylvain begs. “Throw me a bone here, Felix.”

Felix sighs, looking down at his feet. Sylvain realizes the tips of his ears are tinged slightly pink.

“Dimitri really is just an old friend,” Felix finally says, his voice quiet. “But it’s… there’s some shit there. I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Okay,” Sylvain says. “I won’t ask.”

Felix shakes his head. “No. You should know.”

So Felix helps Sylvain get out of his clothes and change into the pajamas he’s started leaving at Felix’s apartment. They turn the lights off and crawl into Felix’s bed, and Sylvain puts his arms around Felix as he starts to talk. Felix tells him about two households that were so close they were basically the same family, two boys of the same age who were inseparable from the time they were toddlers. How tragedy struck one family, leaving one of the two boys orphaned as a child. How the second family ended up taking him in, treating him just like one of their own. Felix talks about an older brother, whose name was Glenn, who was smart and athletic and talented at everything he did, but who was also a stubborn perfectionist, prone to fits of frustration, incessantly hard on himself. But where he was ruthless with himself he was infinitely kind to Felix and to Dimitri. The kind of big brother who didn't hesitate to wipe tears and snot away with his sleeve. The kind of big brother who actually apologized when he was in the wrong. Felix adored him. Felix spent his entire childhood wanting to be just like him. Glenn got good grades, was the star of his high school fencing team, volunteered at the local soup kitchen, captained his quiz bowl team. He got into Yale, and then to Harvard Law. It was like a prophecy. He was going to graduate summa cum laude, and he was going to become one of the youngest congressmen in American history, and he was going to achieve everything he ever wanted to do. And Felix, who was the second child, who was terrible at school but at least showed keen athletic potential, would go to Yale and then go on to be a professional athlete, and it would be fine – prestigious enough to be worthy of his family name, and even if it wasn’t ideal it was good enough, because Glenn was there. Glenn, the north star, the golden boy, the chosen one.

And then one day there was an accident. There were two boys in a car. One was named Glenn, and he died instantly. The other was named Dimitri, and he died a slower death. They had been on their way to one of Felix’s fencing matches.

Dimitri was a shell of his former self. Dimitri was supposed to be a golden boy too. Dimitri was supposed to carry on the legacy of his dead parents, of his entire dead family. Dimitri had been perfect the way Glenn had been, and the way Felix simply wasn’t. Until one day, when the weight of all that responsibility came crashing down in an instant, he suddenly wasn't any longer. Dimitri was angry, and distant, and an entirely different person, one that scared Felix. He used to have nightmares about getting strangled to death by Dimitri, those huge hands closing down on his throat, but every time he called out his name, there wasn’t even a flicker of recognition on his former friend's face.

Felix wanted to drop out of college. What was the fucking point? He wasn’t Glenn. He’d never be Glenn. And somebody needed to be there for Dimitri, to clean up after his messes. His father said he couldn’t. His father said Glenn wouldn’t have wanted Felix to throw his life away like that. His father said many things. Glenn’s death was God’s plan. Glenn was in a better place now. Glenn’s death should mean something. Glenn should be an inspiration to us all. None of those were the words Felix wanted to hear.

Felix quit the fencing team. Felix lost his athletic scholarship. His father agreed to pay for the rest of his tuition, but Felix couldn’t keep up with his classes. Felix got assigned a tutor for one of his classes, a tiny redheaded girl named Annette. Annette saved Felix’s grades, and even though she didn’t know it at the time, she saved Felix’s life too.

Annette was starting to go for yoga classes. Felix joined her. Three years later they moved to New York City and opened a yoga studio. Dimitri got better over time. He gained weight, cut his hair, started smiling again. He re-enrolled at college, finally got his degree. He got accepted to Harvard Law, just like Glenn had. Felix stopped having his nightmares. He’s started visiting his father again. He thinks things are better now, finally.

“I didn’t know,” Sylvain says, even though it’s such a pointless thing to say. Of course he didn’t know. How could he have known? But Felix just smiles, and even in the dark that tiny smile still knocks Sylvain flat in an instant.

“Sorry,” Felix mumbles. “That was a lot.”

“No, not at all,” Sylvain says, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of Felix’s hair behind his ear. “I’m sorry about your brother.”

“It’s fine,” Felix says. “It was a long time ago.”

“I have a brother too,” Sylvain confesses. “He’s a piece of shit, but I don’t know what I’d do if he actually died.”

Felix eyes shine in the darkness of the room. “Tell me about him,” he says.

So Sylvain does. He tells Felix about Miklan, the black sheep of the family, who hated his father and hated the Gautier name and hated their stifling upper-middle-class lifestyle. So did Sylvain, so they’re alike in that regard. But while Sylvain’s distaste for familial obligation manifested in a theatre career, Miklan decided to go down a different path. Selling drugs to high school kids at first, nothing too outrageous, but then it got bigger. The operations got more complex. Riskier. More cash involved. They got tangled up into a larger web of illegal activities. Fraud. Money laundering. Whatever. He wasn’t a very good criminal, because he got caught eventually. Sylvain still remembers his father’s face when he’d found out. He might be a disappointment, but at least he’ll never be as big of a disappointment as Miklan.

“You’re not a disappointment,” Felix murmurs.

Sylvain scoots forward so that their foreheads can touch. He reaches for Felix’s hand, and their fingers intertwine. When Felix says it like that, he thinks he can actually believe it for himself.


	5. child's pose, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cw: canonical character death & implied/referenced child abuse

At the risk of jinxing everything, Sylvain would hazard to say that things are actually going well in his life.

He manages to get past the first round of auditions for Company, and actually feels like the first callback went pretty well. He’s starting to feel like he might have a genuine shot at this. He starts listening to the different cast albums obsessively, everywhere he goes – at the grocery store, on the subway, at the gym. He talks to whoever he can get to listen to him about the show, its themes and musical numbers, the tricky business of trying to revive a show for a modern audience, the implications of switching the genders of certain characters but not others. Some people, like Dorothea, are enthusiastic, and will sit with him in overpriced coffee shops for hours just talking about it. Others, like Mercedes, will let Sylvain ramble on and on, even though it’s abundantly clear that they have absolutely no clue what he’s saying. And others still, like Felix, will absolutely not tolerate Sylvain’s musings for more than five minutes at a time, which honestly, is totally fair.

Things are going well with Felix too, Sylvain thinks. Sometimes he still finds himself slipping into bad habits, answering some of Felix’s more probing questions with flippant responses that he doesn’t even register as a reflex action until he sees the pissed off look on Felix’s face. It’s a challenge, having to remind himself to be open, that it’s okay to spill his guts, that Felix already knows the worst parts of him and is still here anyway. But otherwise, it’s honestly a surprise how seamlessly Felix fits into his life – it feels like the most natural thing in the world now, to slip his hand into Felix’s when they go out; to wake up in Felix’s bed to the smell of bacon and coffee; for Felix to be the thing he reaches for in the middle of the night. It feels good to finally be able to identify that little swooping sensation in his chest every time he thinks about Felix. It feels good to buy him all the goddamn Costco beef jerky he could ever want, just to get to see him smile. It feels good, period. Sylvain’s happy. He’s really happy.

And then, because he’s Sylvain fucking Gautier, the universe decides it has other plans for him.

* * *

Exactly six months to the fateful day Sylvain dislocated his shoulder onstage, he wakes up to see a text on his phone. He blinks blearily, sleep clearing from his eyes as he tries to focus on what’s on his screen.

The first thing that really hits him is the number. It’s a number that he deleted from his contacts years ago, but that he’s never been able to fully scrub from his memory. He knows those digits, could recite them in his sleep. His own phone number still carries that exact same area code.

Then he unlocks his phone to read the full message.

> **Unknown Number [8:42AM]:** Sylvain, this is your mother. Your brother passed away suddenly last night, and we will be holding the funeral this Friday. It would mean a lot to both myself and your father if you could attend. Please let me know.

“Are you okay?”

Sylvain looks up to see Felix standing over the bed, staring down at him with his brow furrowed.

 _I’m fine_ , Sylvain wants to reply, but somehow he can’t quite make his vocal cords work right now.

“Sylvain?” Felix climbs onto the bed to sit next to Sylvain, the look on his face growing even more concerned. “You’re scaring me.”

Wordlessly, Sylvain hands his phone to Felix. He watches the way Felix’s face falls as he reads what’s on the screen.

“Shit,” Felix murmurs. He puts the phone down, but he keeps on staring down at it. He doesn’t say anything, but Sylvain doesn’t blame him. If he were in Felix’s shoes, he wouldn’t know what to say either. What _is_ there to say, really? What could Felix possibly say that would capture the sheer fucked-upedness of the situation?

“I’m sorry,” is what he finally settles on as he scoots forward to pull Sylvain into a hug. Sylvain buries his face into Felix’s shoulder.

“I have to take time off from work,” he mutters. “Friday – that’s four days from now.”

Felix doesn’t reply. He just strokes Sylvain’s hair, tentative and uncertain, but Sylvain finds himself relaxing under Felix’s ministrations anyway. There’s a long moment where Sylvain doesn’t do anything but inhale the scent of Felix’s laundry detergent. It does make him feel better, actually, to just stay like this, surrounded by nothing but Felix, Felix’s hands and Felix’s smell and Felix’s soft bedsheets.

Felix is the one who breaks the silence first. “I’ll go with you,” he says.

Sylvain lifts his head at that, and the look on Felix’s face is hard and determined, like he’s just made up his mind about something.

“You don’t have to,” Sylvain responds automatically.

“Asshole,” Felix says. “I _want_ to.”

Sylvain can’t comprehend it. He doesn’t get why someone like Felix would want to do that for someone like Sylvain. No one should ever _want_ to go to the Gautier estate, that miserable home with the empty hallways where your footsteps echo throughout that cavernous space – so fucking huge, and for what? Now there’s one less Gautier, not that he ever really counted anyway. Good. _The fewer of us the better_ , Sylvain thinks bitterly.

But Felix’s jaw goes tight, the way it does when he’s really upset.

“You don’t get it,” he growls. He’s leaning forward now, cupping Sylvain’s cheek with one hand. His eyes are blazing, gaze so intense that Sylvain has to force himself not to look away. “My brother’s funeral was the worst day of my life. I’m not letting you do that alone.”

“Felix,” Sylvain says. He doesn’t recognize the voice that comes out of his mouth – strangled, tight. He feels overwhelmed, suddenly. He feels like his heart’s being cleaved right into two. He can’t find the words to describe this thing in his chest, this thing that’s threatening to drag him under until he’s lost at sea, no hope of returning to shore, so he just says the only thing he can even think of saying right now, even though it feels so laughably inadequate in the face of the roaring tide of emotion swirling inside of him. “Thank you,” he says, simply, and means it.

“Don’t mention it,” Felix responds, looking away now like he’s suddenly embarrassed. He starts to withdraw his hand, but Sylvain holds it down, anchoring him in place.

“Just stay here for a bit,” Sylvain whispers, and so Felix does.

* * *

They rent a car and make the arduous drive up the Massachusetts, taking turns in the driver’s seat. The last time Sylvain made the journey, it was years ago in a car containing all the things he wanted to keep with him for his move to New York. Everything else remained back in that house he swore never to return to. That was the last time he spoke to his parents.

They get a hotel room in Boston, because Sylvain would rather die than sleep in that house again. He doesn’t even know what they did to his childhood bedroom. The second Miklan got arrested his father had hired someone to put all his things into boxes and then disappear them from his sight. Sylvain assumes the same thing happened when’d moved out. Shame, because he kind of misses that shoebox of old porno magazines he’d not-so-surreptitiously hidden under his bed all throughout high school. When he says so out loud, Felix just snorts loudly, but judiciously keeps his eyes on the road.

“Who the hell are you? Some character from an 80’s teen movie?” Felix says, smirking a little at his own joke. Sylvain can’t stop staring at him, at his handsome profile and his hands on the steering wheel. For the briefest of moments he thinks, _what if we just never stopped driving? What if we just kept going, right past Massachusetts, as far north as we could possibly go?_ They could go up to New Hampshire, or Maine, or even all the way up to Canada, and they could live in the wilderness together, and Sylvain would spend his days ice fishing or elk hunting and then drag his spoils back to their cabin in the woods where Felix would be waiting for him, and they would fuck all the time just to keep themselves warm, and never, ever have to go back to Sylvain’s hometown ever again.

“Sylvian?” Felix says.

Felix’s voice pulls Sylvain right out of his thoughts. Right. That’s just a fantasy, of course. Sylvain would probably freeze to death within his first day of trying to tough it out in the Canadian bush; he’s too much of a city slicker to ever live somewhere without all the comforts of modern living. Felix would thrive, though. He thinks Felix would look good out there, knee-deep in the pristine white snow.

“Sorry,” Sylvain says. “Just thinking.”

Felix keeps his eyes trained on the road, but he removes one hand from the steering wheel to reach out for Sylvain’s, interlacing their fingers and squeezing.

“Stop thinking so much,” Felix commands. “Just play Company over the aux cord, whatever.”

Sylvain chuckles. “If you insist,” he says, and then does, even though Felix is sick to death of the score by now. _Somebody hold me too close_ , Dean Jones croons over the speakers. _Somebody hurt me too deep_ , and Sylvain watches the sun sink lower in the sky as the car just keeps on rolling down the highway.

* * *

The official story is that Miklan suffered a sudden heart attack, that he’d passed away peacefully in his sleep and that when the wardens found him the next morning he’d already been long gone. That’s what they’re saying on the local news outlets, at least, when Sylvain googles Miklan’s name, because the Gautier name still carries enough clout for something like this to be deemed newsworthy. Sylvain doesn’t doubt that the real truth is something far more harrowing. His brother would’ve never let death claim him in his sleep. He would’ve gone down swinging.

Sylvain’s parents probably know the truth, but it’s not like he’s ever going to ask them. All he did was tell his mother he’ll be there, and she responded with more details as well as strict instructions that Sylvain was _not_ to bring any guests to the actual service because it’s for family members only. When he’d showed the text to Felix he’d just looked at it, said out loud, “fuck that,” and declared that he was going to come along anyway, if only to stand outside the goddamn church and wait for the entire thing to be over. What they actually end up deciding on is for Felix to stay in Boston while Sylvain goes to the service; he’ll drive back right after it’s over, and then they’ll spend the rest of the day together in the city. Felix acquiesces, even though he still looks like he wants to argue about it as he watches Sylvain get dressed for the funeral. Sylvain fiddles with his half-Windsor knot, and in the mirror he can see Felix lying on his front in bed, watching him intently.

“I can still come with you, you know,” Felix says at last, when Sylvain finally decides he’s happy with the way his tie looks.

“Felix,” Sylvain says. “We’ve been through this.”

“I just wanted to say it again,” Felix retorts. Sylvain sighs, finally turning around so that he can fully look Felix in the eye. Felix just stares back at him, his jaw set defiantly.

“Look,” Sylvain says. He walks towards the bed, sitting down just as Felix pushes himself up into a seat as well. Sylvain takes Felix’s hand in his, running his thumb over Felix’s knuckles. “I just want to get this over with, okay? I don’t want to cause a scene.”

“You’re saying I’m going to cause a scene?” Felix asks. Sylvain can’t quite tell if he’s joking or not, but at least he looks less tense now.

“Babe, I don’t know how to tell you this,” Sylvain says, smiling a little in spite of himself, “but you’re not exactly the best when it comes to public situations.”

“Asshole,” Felix responds, but there’s no heat in it. He leans forward, kissing Sylvain gently on the lips. It barely lasts longer than a second, but Sylvain can still feel it even after he pulls away.

“Don’t miss me too much,” Sylvain says.

“I’ll try,” Felix says wryly.

The send-off from Felix does make him feel slightly better about the whole thing as he gets in the car and makes the drive to the church he grew up in. He remembers going faithfully, every Sunday, wedged in the pews between his father and his mother. Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t remember ever going to church with Miklan. Kind of fucked up that Miklan’s funeral is going to be the one time in Sylvain’s life that the entire Gautier family will finally be reunited in church together, all under the watchful eyes of God.

The closer Sylvain gets to his hometown, the more he remembers. It’s like with every turn he makes another memory comes flooding back: Miklan’s sneering face, the timber of his father’s voice. Signing up for every extracurricular club that would take him in high school just to have a reason not to go back home. Picking his carefully annotated scripts out of the trash because Miklan thought it would be hilarious to throw them away, with his father’s tacit approval that Sylvain shouldn’t be wasting his time on silly high school theatre productions anyway. Getting locked out of the house by Miklan when their parents were away. Awkward family dinners, sitting across from his mother and picking at his food as his father interrogated him about his life and all his choices, and _see, Miklan, Sylvain’s doing well in school, although I suppose I shouldn’t have expected the same from you._ Learning how to lie through his teeth and say _oh, this bruise? I got it from playing soccer yesterday._

Sylvain’s starting to wish he’d let Felix come along with him. He’s starting to wish he hadn’t come here at all. But it’s too late now, because he’s pulling into the driveway of the church, that familiar steeple bearing over him just as tall as he remembers. All of a sudden it’s like he’s thirteen all over again, gangly and nervous in a sweater he hadn’t picked out for himself, smiling politely to all the middle aged ladies cooing over him and pretending to be that perfect paragon of respectability they already expected him to be. It’s so easy to fall into that routine again, even now, more than ten years later. Sylvain parks the car and gets out, feeling the gravel under his feet, and a feeling of numb calmness washes over him. It’s almost identical to the feeling he gets when he’s backstage, right before he’s about to make his entrance. It’s performance, really. He’s been performing all his life.

That numb feeling stays with him as he walks into the church. It’s exactly like he remembers, all white walls and wooden floors and that musty old smell he can’t quite describe. It stays with him even as he finally lays eyes on his parents, standing right by the entrance to the sanctuary. They look older, tired, but otherwise just as Sylvain remembers, his father in his expensive tailored suit, his mother quiet and subdued next to him in her modest black dress.

“Sylvain,” she says. His father doesn’t say anything. For a second he thinks she’s going to go in for a hug, but then the moment passes, and she stays right where she’s standing, hands right by her side.

“Hey mom,” Sylvain says, and then keeps walking, right past them, to take a seat right by the back. They don’t follow him, not that he expected them to.

The church is filled with family members he hasn’t seen in years. Lots of redheads, the same fiery shade as Sylvain, as his father, as Miklan had been. Sylvain studies the back of their heads, recognizing some of them, having absolutely no idea who the others are. None of them turn around. Nobody notices him. It feels like it’s his fucking funeral they’re all at, not Miklan’s. Like he’s the one haunting this church, instead of Miklan’s undoubtedly malevolent spirit. The pews have barely filled up by the time the funeral actually starts. Not enough family members to actually fill up all the seats. Clearly this was a concerted effort on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Gautier to keep the proceedings as small as possible, minimize any risk of scandal.

That numb feeling stays with him throughout the entire service. It stays with him when the pallbearers enter, their grip firm on Miklan’s coffin. The casket is left closed the entire time, which is just as well. It stays with him throughout the prayers, the scripture readings. _Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me._ Sylvain hasn’t set foot in a church for years, but the words still come to him as familiarly as any line in any play he’s ever done. _Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever._ He tries to crane his neck to catch a glimpse of his parents right in the first row, but he can’t see them over the rows of people in front of him. He can’t imagine what they must be feeling right now.

Sylvain hasn’t been to a lot of funerals in his life, but it still feels like the saddest fucking funeral in the history of the world. Not saddest, as in people are sad about someone dying, but saddest in the complete and utter lack of any kind of emotion. There are no hymns. There’s barely a eulogy. The priest just delivers some platitudes about the pain of losing a firstborn son, but clearly there’s not a lot about Miklan’s life that can possibly be spoken about in polite company. He talks about _a flame extinguished far too soon_ and _we must keep in mind that God has a hand in everything, even a tragedy like this_ , and it takes every ounce of willpower in Sylvain’s body not to stand up and walk out, right there and then. He wonders if this is how Felix felt at his brother’s funeral. If it’s this hard to sit through a service for a brother he hated all his life, how hard must it have been for someone like Felix, who grew up never having to doubt for a second that he was loved? How did Felix ever get through this by himself? God, he wants to see Felix so bad. He really, really wishes Felix were sitting next to him right now.

The second the service ends Sylvain’s on his feet, ready to get the fuck out. He only makes it as far as out the front doors when he hears his father call from behind him, “Sylvain. Wait.”

And even though Sylvain’s an independent adult who pays his own bills and hasn’t seen or heard from his father in years, who’s painstakingly built up a life for himself in a city where nobody cares where you’re from, the sound of his father’s voice still makes him stop in his tracks. It’s pure instinct. His body reacts before his mind even realizes what’s happening. Ever the obedient son, even now.

“Sylvain,” his father says again, and Sylvain forces himself to turn around so that they’re finally face-to-face.

Up close, Sylvain can see the streaks of silver in his hair, the way his hairline’s started thinning, but otherwise he still looks exactly the same. That same face from his bad dreams, from memories he’s spent years trying to scrub from his brain. Sylvain should’ve never come back here.

“Hi, dad,” Sylvain says, smiling wryly.

“I’m glad you could make it,” his father replies. Sylvain stares back at him, but he can’t read his father’s expression at all. His face is perfectly blank, revealing absolutely nothing.

“What do you want?” Sylvain asks. Irritation slips through the cracks in his father’s façade for the briefest of moments before his face smoothens out again, impassive, calm.

“To reconcile,” he says smoothly. “One of my sons is dead. I don’t intend to lose the other one as well.”

 _You lost me the second you disowned me_ , Sylvain thinks, but he bites his tongue before he can actually say those words out loud.

“Are you serious?” is what he says instead. His father purses his lips. God, he looks so much like Miklan. Sylvian has no idea how he’s never noticed.

“Of course,” his father says. “That’s why I was hoping you would come back to the house tonight. Your mother and I would like to throw a benefit in your honor.”

“What?” None of this is making sense. This isn’t what Sylvain was expecting when he agreed to come back to his hometown to attend his brother’s funeral. He doesn’t know what he wanted out of this, actually. To look his brother in the eye one last time, maybe. To make peace with that dark part inside of him that will never stop clawing at him for as long as he lives. Reconciliation was never on the table. His father’s not the _reconciling_ type. There must be something else here, some kind of hidden motive—

“Your mother and I have recently decided to become patrons of the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston,” his father says. “We’ll be throwing a fundraiser tonight, which would also allow us to publicly welcome you back to the family.”

—and suddenly everything clicks into place.

“I get it now,” Sylvain says. He’s breathing hard, hands clenched into fists. He’s so angry he can barely even speak, but he forces himself to spit the words out anyway. “You’re trying to pull some kind of PR stunt, aren't you?”

“Of course not—” his father starts to protest, but Sylvain interrupts him. He doesn’t have the patience for this. His brother is dead, and sure, he was a dick who kicked Sylvain around for his entire childhood, but he’s _dead_ , a victim of his father’s reign of terror just as much as Sylvain was, and the first thing on his father’s mind was, what, how to rescue his reputation? How to get the entirety of New England to stop thinking of him as the fucking asshole he really is?

“You know how bad it looks to have one dead son and another estranged one, don’t you?” Sylvain says, the words pouring out of him now. “So you planned this benefit so that you could show everyone that you’re a changed man and you’re suddenly so accepting of your remaining son’s career. I bet you don’t even care about the Huntington, do you? Have you even seen any of their shows?”

His father just glares back at him, absolutely mutinous with fury.

“If you’re so hell-bent on thinking of me as a villain I’m not going to bother trying to disabuse you of that ridiculous notion,” he says, his voice as icy cold as it’d been when he’d announced that he was cutting Sylvain off from the family fortune. Sylvain recognizes what anger looks like on him, how his voice gets all clipped and precise, how he looks back at you like you’re worth nothing to him. “But if you just show up and cooperate you’ll be written back into the inheritance.”

“Fuck you,” Sylvain snarls. “I don’t want your goddamn blood money.”

He’s never sworn at his father, ever, in his entire life. He watches his father’s face go pale.

“You’re making a mistake,” he says, but Sylvain’s already turning on his heel, striding quickly towards his car.

“Tell mom I said bye,” Sylvain replies.

As he flings the car door open and shoves himself into the driver’s seat he hears his father say, “If you change your mind you know where to find me.”

“I won’t,” Sylvain assures him, and then slams the door shut. As he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the street he can still see his father in the rear-view mirror, watching him leave.

* * *

He drives back to his hotel in Boston, his mind spinning the whole time. He can still his insides churning with rage. He can’t get the look on his father’s face out of his head. When he hits a red light he pulls out his phone to call Felix.

“How did it go?” Felix says when he picks up. There’s a significant amount of background noise behind him, and Sylvain wonders where he might have gone, what he’s doing now with his free time.

“Terrible,” Sylvain replies. “Can you meet me in the hotel in half an hour?”

There’s a brief pause over the line, then: “Yeah, of course,” Felix says.

“Thank you,” Sylvain says. He hangs up before Felix can respond. He just really doesn’t want to talk right now. There’s so much to say, and if he starts saying any of it here, in his car, he’s never going to stop talking again, he’s going to completely fall apart at the seams. Better to do it face-to-face, so that at least Felix can look him in the eye and tell him he’s acting insane, and even if that doesn’t do anything about the weight in Sylvain’s chest that’s making him want to smash every single object in sight it’ll at least remind him of who he is, that he has a life somewhere else that’s not here, that this is not the person that Sylvain’s forced himself to become.

Except when he gets back to the hotel Felix isn’t there. Which is fine. Sylvain can wait. He wrenches off the tie and the suit jacket, unbuttons the top two buttons of his dress shirt, rolls up the sleeves until he finally feels like he can breathe again. But Felix still hasn’t returned by then, so Sylvain starts flicking mindlessly through channels on the hotel room TV. And then he scrolls through Instagram. And then he scrolls through Facebook. And he’s starting to wonder if Felix maybe got kidnapped off the streets of Boston when he hears the whirr of the electronic lock, and Sylvain finally looks up to see the door swing open and Felix walk through it.

“Where were you?” Sylvain asks.

“Sorry,” Felix says, locking the door behind him, “there was a delay on the T, and—”

“No,” Sylvain says. “ _Where_ were you?”

Felix goes deadly silent. He turns out to look at Sylvain. There’s a wary look in his eye, like he’s staring down a wild animal.

“I was in Cambridge,” Felix says, slowly. “With Dimitri.”

“Oh,” Sylvain says. He has no idea what the expression on his face looks like right now, but something about it makes Felix go tense, shoulders braced like he’s on the defensive.

“He lives there,” Felix says. “You know this.”

“You said you’d meet me here,” Sylvain replies.

“I’m ten fucking minutes late, sue me,” Felix hisses, his temper reaching its breaking point now. “I don’t control the goddamn MBTA, Gautier.”

And maybe that wasn’t Felix’s intention at all, but being referred to by his last name, that name that Sylvain’s tried so hard to dissociate himself from, only to be abruptly reminded that there’s no running away from his past, that no matter how much he tries he’ll always be his father’s son – Sylvain feels it like a slap to the face.

“You didn’t come here for me at all, did you?” Sylvain asks. “I was just a convenient free ride, huh? Amtrak not good enough for you?” He knows he’s being irrational, but he can’t stop himself. It’s like he’s strapped to a roller coaster and now he’s in free fall, gravity pulling him to the ground. He knows he’s being entirely ridiculous right now, but there’s a tiny kernel of ugliness inside of him that’s whispering, _do what you do best, Sylvain, go on and make a bad situation worse. It’s what you deserve. You think you deserve good things? Go fuck yourself._

“That's not fair,” Felix says. “You know that’s not true,” and the look on his face doesn’t even translate as anger anymore. He just looks hurt. And Sylvain did that, put that look on his face, but he has no clue how to stop hurting him. It’s wired into him. It’s part of his DNA. Gautier men are all bastards. Sylvain’s an idiot for thinking he might be an exception.

“Do I really? It’s not like—” _It’s not like you’ve ever told me otherwise_ , Sylvain wants to say, but doesn’t. He changes tacks instead. “It’s not like I asked you to come here. You’re the one who wanted to come.”

“Yeah, because I fucking care about you,” Felix snarls, and now he’s gone back to looking absolutely livid. “Don’t punish me because of your own damn problems.”

“I’m not punishing you—”

“Yes, you are.” And now Felix is advancing towards him, eyes blazing, and Sylvain just remains rooted to the spot, pinned down by the weight of Felix’s furious gaze. “You’re so fucking arrogant. You really think you’re the only rich boy in New York with problems. You think I don’t know exactly who you are? You think Ingrid doesn’t? Or Mercedes, or Dorothea, or any of your other friends you didn’t bother telling why you skipped town? Would you even have told me if I hadn’t been right there when you got that text from your mom? God,” Felix scoffs, shaking his head, “you really think you’re so goddamn special and unique, don’t you? You think you’re some kind of tortured anti-hero? Well newsflash: you’re not, so stop acting like one and just say what you really mean instead of getting off on how sad and fucked up you are, as if I’m not sad and fucked up too.”

Felix is breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling with each breath, face red from a combination of anger and exertion. Sylvain just stands there, stunned into silence.

“You’re not sad and fucked up,” is what he finally says. Felix’s gaze softens, just a little.

“Yeah, because moving to New York to start a yoga studio was totally part of my life plan,” he says.

Sylvain doesn’t respond. He just stares at the floor, suddenly shamefaced. He hears rather than sees Felix sigh. Out of the corner of his eye he watches Felix’s feet as he takes another few tentative steps towards Sylvain, stopping right in front of him.

“Look,” Felix says, his voice gone quiet and calm now. “I get it, okay? I really do. But you have to stop saying shit to me and trying to push me away.”

“Okay,” Sylvain says. Then, a beat later: “Sorry,” he adds.

“Damn right you’re sorry,” Felix says.

Sylvain finally looks up, and he sees Felix looking back at him, his eyes bright and intense, and there’s just something about his gaze that makes something inside of Sylvain crack open, unleashing a sharp burst of emotion that knocks him flat in an instant, some indiscernible feeling that Sylvain can’t quite put a name to – not yet, at least, not right now, not when everything still feels tentative and sharp and raw. Instead he just reaches out his arms, and Felix comes to him easily, letting Sylvain fold him into a tight embrace. Sylvain has no idea how he managed to survive this long before he discovered what it feels like to have Felix in his arms, how he slots perfectly against Sylvain’s rough edges, the feeling of his cheek nestled firm against the crook of Sylvain’s shoulder, the way his fingers clutch at Sylvain’s back like he’s holding on for his dear life.

Sylvain has no idea how long they stay like that, but he does have to eventually have to let Felix go. They sit down on the edge of the bed instead, and Sylvain swipes his thumb over Felix’s knuckles as he finally tells him how his day went: that terrible funeral, his father’s absurd proposition.

“What a dick,” Felix mutters. He looks genuinely furious on Sylvain’s behalf, and maybe it makes Sylvain a bad person, but he can’t help but smile at Felix’s unrestrained anger. It feels good, honestly, to have someone get mad on his behalf, to know that the rage he’s feeling is a righteous one, a well-earned one.

“That’s my dad for you,” Sylvain says quietly. Felix looks up at Sylvain, squeezing his hand.

“Are you going to go?” he asks.

Sylvain considers the question. His first instinct is to go _no fucking way_ , and honestly, he’s already made it abundantly clear to his father just how repulsive the idea of showing up to his childhood home for the sake of some flimsy image-management stunt is to him. But another part of him does want to go, if only so he can exact his revenge in a more fulfilling way. Somehow yelling at his father in the parking lot of a church after the funeral of his asshole older brother wasn’t as satisfying as Sylvain thought it would be. Sylvain imagines telling his father exactly where he can stuff the Gautier name and the Gautier estate and the Gautier inheritance, right in front of the hundreds of New England snobs he’s no doubt invited. He tries to picture the look on his father’s face, the shame, the fury, the utter embarrassment. It’s honestly too good to pass up.

“I don't know,” is what he tells Felix. “If I went, would you go with me?”

Felix levels him with his best _are you fucking idiot_ look, and somehow it just makes Sylvain feel all warm on the inside.

“I packed a suit, you know,” Felix says, in lieu of a direct response. “For the funeral, but you didn’t end up letting me go.”

“Well,” Sylvain says, his throat tight. “We can’t let that go to waste now, can we?”

And for the first time today, Felix smiles at him.


	6. child's pose, part 2

“It’s an old estate,” Sylvain says as a warning, as they make the drive to his parents’ house. He thinks he probably should’ve prepared Felix better for this. He knows Felix comes from money too, but even so, the Gautier estate is still something to behold: surrounded by greenery on all sides, deliberately secluded from the surrounding homes with just a single elusive road snaking up to the entrance. Sylvain had learned from a young age that inviting other kids to the house was a huge no-no – because of its secludedness, because of Miklan’s presence, because the last thing his parents wanted was to have half a dozen grubby children tracking mud and dirt across the polished marble floors, putting their grimy hands on priceless paintings and antique furniture and other signifiers of wealth that Sylvain quickly learned were not, in fact, normal features of a typical childhood home. Sylvain’s spent the last eight years of his life running away from all this, and now here he is, driving right back into the belly of the beast.

He doesn’t even realize at first just how much the drive is affecting him, how the way muscle memory kicks in as he makes familiar turns down familiar streets is activating an instinctive physical response in him until Felix puts his hand on Sylvain’s thigh. It’s only then that Sylvain realizes just how hard his heart’s beating in his chest right now, the fact that he’s gripping onto the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are starting to turn white.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Felix says.

“I know,” Sylvain replies. He forces himself to relax his grip. “But I want to.”

“Okay,” Felix says. “If you’re sure.”

Sylvain’s not entirely sure, actually, but he looks over at Felix and smiles anyway. After that the both of them fall silent for the rest of the ride; every time Sylvain looks over at Felix he’s staring intently out the window, watching the bustle and activity of downtown Boston gradually give way to suburban neighborhoods, which then melts away into nothing but an expanse of carefully-curated greenery, which is how Sylvain knows they’re getting close. The sun is setting, casting an eerie orange glow over the landscape and over Felix’s dark hair. Sylvain finds himself thinking about that earlier fantasy again, of the two of them running away into the wilderness, surviving off of nothing but the land and each other. It’s a nice fantasy, but it’s time to stop running away now.

And then finally, at long last, they’re here. When he pulls into the driveway a valet in a cheap suit takes Sylvain’s keys from him. The obvious look of disappointment on his face at the sight of Sylvain’s beat-up rented Subaru is honestly enough to make Sylvain feel better about the whole thing – that is, until he steps out of the car and sees the façade of the building laid out right in front him, the white walls and heavy doors and giant glass windows all bearing down over him like a specter from the past now back to haunt his worst dreams.

“Ready?” Felix asks.

Sylvain blinks, turning to Felix, who’s looking right back at him. He has his hand outstretched, palm up, waiting for Sylvain.

“I think so,” Sylvain replies, and takes Felix’s hand in his. “Let’s go.”

When they step through the front doors, Sylvain’s first thought is: _wow, they really pulled out all the stops for this._

There are more people crammed into the room that Sylvain ever remembers there being. His parents used to throw parties all the time when he was a kid. He remembers getting dressed in in his little miniature suits, all bow ties and suspenders so that his mom’s friends could coo over him like they never would over their own children. The parties got more and more infrequent as he grew older, and then after Miklan got arrested, they stopped completely. Still, the amount of time that’s passed since his parents’ last big party hasn’t dulled their proclivity for pomp and circumstance at all – if anything it’s like unleashing a torrential flood after many long years of drought. There are waiters walking around with silver trays stacked with champagne flutes and tiny smoked salmon canapés. Men in suits stand around with women in their best evening finery, probably bragging about their latest game of golf or telling stories about holidays to Santorini or whatever else obscenely rich people like to talk about. The overwhelming smell of a hundred different kinds of colognes and perfumes mingle together in the air. There’s a goddamn swing band in the corner, and when Sylvain listens closely he realizes they’re playing covers of classic musical theatre songs, all Gershwin and Bernstein and Rodgers. Sylvain recognizes a couple of Boston-based actors, too, acquaintances currently doing productions down at A.R.T., friends from high school who did shows with him and whom his father used to absolutely despise. _I don’t know why they’re wasting their high school years on these useless hobbies_ , he used to say, until Sylvain learned to stop talking about his theatre endeavors in front of him. The whole room is packed to the brim with people, filled with raucous noise and conversation and music, and all Sylvain wants to do is throw up. All these people, here for a party in his honor, allegedly, and all he wants to do is run away. He doesn’t want to see any of these people. They’re not here for him. No one in his entire worthless town is here for him.

“Sylvain?” Felix asks, looking intently at him, brows knitted together in concern.

“C’mon,” Sylvain says, squeezing Felix’s hand. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

Felix doesn’t say anything in response, but he lets Sylvain drag him away from the crowd and towards a door in the corner. Nobody notices as they slip right out of the room. It’s been a long time, but Sylvain still knows the layout of the house like the back of his hand, all the convoluted passages and winding hallways that ultimately lead to his third-floor bedroom, his one sanctuary that’s kept him safe throughout his childhood years. Sylvain leads Felix past Cézanne paintings hanging innocuously on wood-paneled walls, past the closed door of his father’s office, through sitting rooms that Sylvain has never seen anyone actually sitting in, and then finally to his bedroom door which, surprisingly, swings open easily.

Even more surprising is the fact that it seems to have been entirely untouched since the last time Sylvain was here. He recognizes those bedsheets, the books he left behind still stacked neatly on his desk, the punk rock posters hanging on his walls, now old and faded but still hanging on for dear life.

“Green Day? Really?” Felix snorts.

“I went through a phase, okay,” Sylvain retorts as he walks towards his bed, dropping to his knees next to it as he reaches under it and—yes. It’s still there. He pulls out a shoebox, sweeping off the layer of dust that’s collected on top of it.

Felix raises an eyebrow. “Is that—”

“Yup,” Sylvain says, grinning manically. “Come here and look through it with me.”

Felix rolls his eyes, but he goes to sit down next to Sylvain on the bed anyway as Sylvain gingerly pulls the lid off to reveal his old stash of porno magazines, carefully curated during his years in high school.

“Gross,” Felix mutters, but Sylvain ignores him in favor of pulling out one particularly well-worn Playboy. He remembers this one. He remembers liking this particular issue a lot. Sylvain flips it open to a dog-eared page, and is immediately met with a full two-page spread of a pale, dark-haired woman lying on her side. She has sharp, pointed features, and her tits aren’t anything to write home about, but her long, long legs take up most of the spread. She kind of looks like Felix, actually.

“I think I might have a type,” Sylvain says slowly.

“Are you kidding me?” Felix snaps. “Shut the hell up,” but his face is flushed an absolutely delightful shade of red.

“You’re right,” Sylvain replies, laughing as he shuts the magazine and tosses it back into the shoebox. “I mean, I already have the real deal right here in front of me.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Felix hisses, somehow managing to turn ever redder. “Jesus, do you even listen to yourself?” but Sylvain’s barely listening to him as he drops the shoebox back onto the floor, and then grabs Felix’s arm and pulls him down with him. Sylvain’s back hits the mattress and Felix lands on top of them, the both of them pressed together chest-to-chest. In this position Felix’s head is haloed by the ceiling lamp above him, and Sylvain can’t help but stare, transfixed.

“Feels like I’m in high school again,” Sylvain murmurs.

“Yeah?” Felix replies. His face is still flushed, but he looks more relaxed now, content to just lie there on top of Sylvain. “How many high school hook-ups happened right here?”

“It was mostly at other people’s houses,” Sylvain admits. “Or at school.”

“Already so depraved as a teenager,” Felix says, but he reaches down to smooth out Sylvain’s tie anyway, his touch achingly gentle in contrast to his harsh words.

“Aw, don’t be jealous, baby,” Sylvain croons. “You’re better than all of them were.”

“I should hope so,” Felix mutters, and then Sylvain finally shuts him up by dragging him down into a kiss. It’s honestly still a marvel just how easily Felix slots against him; how good it feels to have Felix’s hands braced against his chest, Felix’s hot breath against his cheek when he pulls away. Sylvain reaches up to tuck an errant lock of hair behind Felix’s ear, and Felix actually smiles back at him. Fuck. Sylvain’s such an idiot for ever trying to push Felix away.

“Are you gonna get mad at me if I told you I really want to suck your dick?” Sylvain asks, and Felix goes bright red all over again.

“Here?” Felix asks incredulously. “In your childhood bedroom, with your parents and a hundred other guests downstairs?”

“Yeah,” Sylvain says.

“Incorrigible,” Felix mutters, which isn’t a no. Sylvain grins and slides one hand over the curve of Felix’s ass.

“You look really good in that suit,” Sylvain murmurs against the shell of Felix’s ear, and his smile only widens when he feels Felix shiver against him.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Felix replies, but he doesn’t protest as Sylvain sits up so that they can switch places, letting Sylvain manhandle so that now Felix is one with his back against the bed. Sylvain hovers on top of Felix, taking a moment to just drink in the sight of Felix spread out below him, long dark hair a stark contrast to the white sheets, tie askew, his pristine suit jacket getting hopelessly rumpled. He really does look good in that suit. Felix usually lives in a combination of hoodies and sweatpants; sometimes, if they go somewhere that’s a little on the fancier side, he’ll put on a shirt with an actual collar and a pair of jeans. All this to say that Sylvain has never seen Felix like this, all buttoned-up and proper, betraying his carefully-concealed New England rich boy origins. It’s the same with Sylvian, really, and now here they are, the two of them, runaways from the lives they were born into, now back in this garish Massachusetts mansion playing dress-up in expensive suits. Maybe that’s why all Sylvain wants is to peel all that artifice and pretense off of Felix, layer by layer, until there’s nothing left.

Or maybe it’s just because Sylvain’s a sick bastard whose only delight in life is taking any chance he can get to defile his family home. Take your pick.

“Take it as an apology,” Sylvain says, hands moving to unbuckle Felix’s belt. “For being a shithead to you earlier.”

“You could just say you’re sorry,” Felix mutters.

“Yeah, but this is way more fun,” Sylvain replies, finally getting Felix’s belt off and flinging it to the side. Felix snorts, but he lifts his hips to help as Sylvain pulls off his pants and then his underwear, and Sylvain is delighted to see that Felix is already half-hard.

“Who’s the incorrigible one now?” Sylvain asks.

“Less talk, more action,” Felix growls, so Sylvain just grins widely and finally gets his hand on Felix’s cock, stroking him until he’s fully hard. Downstairs, he can still hear the party going on in full swing—the big band music, the deafening chatter, the occasional peal of raucous laughter—but all of it is drowned out by the sound of Felix’s breath, the little hitching noises that escape unbidden from his throat, the rustle of the sheets beneath him. It’s the easiest thing in the world for Sylvain to let the rest of the world fall away, all his senses narrowing down to Felix laid out and bare in front of him. Sylvain moves lower to press kisses along Felix’s inner thighs, scraping his teeth over the sensitive skin until Felix tugs at Sylvain’s hair and hisses, “Come on, blow me already.”

“Since you asked so nicely,” Sylvain purrs, and starts kissing his way up the length of Felix’s cock instead. Felix’s head falls back against the pillow, eyes fluttering shut, breath escaping in a sudden rush as Sylvain wraps his lips around the tip. Felix always reacts to being teased like it’s going to make him crawl right out of his skin, so Sylvain takes it deliberately slow, tonguing the slit slowly, alternating between applying gentle suction and pulling off to press incongruously chaste kisses along his length.

“Sylvain,” Felix gasps, and when Sylvain lifts his head to look up at Felix’s face, it’s to see his face flushed, pupils blown wide, stray locks of hair starting to come loose from his ponytail. How could Sylvain ever say no to a face like that? He thinks Felix deserves a reward for looking so pretty while mustering every ounce of strength not to beg for what he wants, so Sylvain unceremoniously lowers his head to swallow down the full length of Felix’s cock, from root to tip, and Felix swears loudly, hips bucking up into the wet heat of Sylvain’s mouth. From there Sylvain keeps up a punishing rhythm, bobbing his head and letting his eyelids fall shut to concentrate on the feeling of Felix’s cock hitting the back of his throat, Felix’s hand in his hair. It doesn’t take long at all before Felix tightens his grip and gasps, “Fuck, I’m close,” and Sylvain opens his eyes to take in the sight of Felix, his flushed face and wild hair and the way he stares right back down at Sylvain as he shudders, stifling his loud moan with one hand against his mouth, and finally comes, spilling right down Sylvain’s throat.

Sylvain pulls off to swallow before he crawls back up the length of the bed to brush the loose strands of hair away from Felix’s forehead. Felix looks dazed, but his eyes are dark and intense as he reels Sylvain in for a kiss with one hand on the back of Sylvain’s neck. Sylvain opens his mouth, letting Felix taste his own spunk on the tip of Sylvain’s tongue, and he revels in how wonderfully pliant and honest Felix is underneath him, up until he regains enough presence of mind to pull away and murmur against Sylvain’s cheek, “Let me get you off too.” He punctuates his words by letting his hand drift lower to squeeze the bulge that’s formed in the front of Sylvain’s slacks.

“If you insist, baby,” Sylvain replies, grinning, and gets up onto his knees to hurriedly undo his belt. Felix stays on the bed, watching intently as Sylvain makes quick work of his fly and pulls out his cock, already achingly hard. It’s only then that Felix drags Sylvain back down again until they’re chest-to-chest, and he finally—blissfully—gets his hand on Sylvain’s dick. He kisses the side of Sylvain’s neck as he strokes, barely touching him at all before Sylvain comes embarrassingly quickly, gasping Felix’s name as he comes all over Felix’s hand, some of it dripping down onto the bottom of Felix’s pristine white dress shirt.

“Fuck, sorry,” Sylvain says when he realizes he’s gotten Felix’s shirt dirty, but Felix doesn’t look too bothered by it. Mostly, he’s just staring at his hand with Sylvain’s cum on it like he has no idea what to do with it, which is… fair.

“Just wipe it on the bedsheets, whatever,” Sylvain tells him. Felix looks downright scandalized.

“That’s disgusting,” he says.

“This whole house is disgusting,” Sylvain replies, and something about that statement makes the look on Felix’s face shift into something gentler, more thoughtful.

“You are such a bad fucking influence,” Felix mutters, but he wipes his hand clean on Sylvain’s old bedsheets anyway, and Sylvain can’t help himself from grinning like a lunatic just from watching Felix commit this simple act of desecration.

“Good,” Sylvain says. Felix looks back at him, his expression oddly pensive.

“What?” Sylvain asks.

“Nothing,” Felix says, and pulls Sylvain in for another long, slow kiss. There’s no heat left in it, only a sense of sweetness that’s almost too much for Sylvain to bear. When he pulls away he sees that Felix still has that serious look in his eyes.

“Do you feel better now?” Felix asks.

Sylvain takes a brief moment to consider the question. “Yeah, I think so,” he finally says softly. He strokes his knuckles over Felix’s cheek, and Felix smiles back at him. Sylvain feels his heart flip over in his chest at the sight of it. _I have it so fucking bad_ , he thinks.

“Thank you,” Sylvain says. The words feel wholly inadequate in the face of the sheer gratitude he feels, but Felix is still smiling right back at him like he understands perfectly. And maybe he does. Maybe Felix has understood all along, in spite of Sylvain’s best attempts to pretend otherwise.

“Don’t mention it,” Felix says, simply, and so Sylvain doesn’t.

* * *

Thankfully, when Felix gets dressed again and he tucks the ends of his dress shirt back into his pants, the stain from Sylvain’s cum isn’t visible at all, which is an absolute relief. Sylvain watches him button himself back up and tie his hair back into a perfect ponytail, and as good as he looks in that suit Sylvain still finds himself missing the version of Felix that’s all loose and disheveled, messy and uninhibited in the best possible way. Still, if this is the version of themselves that they need to be in order for Sylvain to say the things he wants to say, then so be it.

“Are you ready?” Felix asks. Instead of responding straightaway Sylvain steps forward and straightens out Felix’s tie, feeling the steady thrum of Felix’s pulse under his fingertips when he brushes his fingers against the base of his neck.

“Yeah,” Sylvain says at last. “Let’s go back downstairs.”

And so, hand-in-hand, they go back the same way they came, past the Cézanne paintings and the sitting rooms and the ominous closed doors. The sound of the party gets louder and louder the closer they get to the source of all the noise – if anything it feels even louder than before. Clearly the event is reaching its peak. Sylvain still remembers how these things go: soon, his father will grab a microphone and make a speech thanking everyone for coming, and then he’ll ask for donations on behalf of whatever sham charity they’ve decided to throw said benefit for. All this to say that if Sylvain’s going to give his father the dressing down he deserves he’s going to have to do it now, before all the guests end up leaving in their expensive cars to go back to their expensive houses, resplendent in their generosity at having done their good charitable deed of the day.

Here’s what Sylvain wants to say: _You’re a sad, miserable man who cares more about your own reputation than about either of your sons._ He wants to say: _You sit in your giant mansion so far removed from the rest of the town, and you think you’re so much better than everybody else when the truth is you’ve never earned an honest day’s wage in your entire life. And yeah, I was raised by you, so I guess I’m fucked up by proxy, but at least I admit it._ He wants to say: _At least I’m not doing to die alone the way you will, and when that happens don’t expect me to come to your lonely little funeral. You can keep the estate and the inheritance and the family wealth. I don’t want a single cent of it._ He wants to say: _Go fuck yourself, dad._

Sylvain’s so wrapped up in his thoughts that, when they finally descend from the staircase and get back down to the ground floor, he barely even notices when he quite literally walks headfirst into someone. Sylvain stumbles back in surprise, which is probably why he doesn’t recognize who it is he just bumped into until the man in question looks right past him, eyes wide, and says, “Felix? What are you doing here?”

And then suddenly everything comes into focus. It’s Rodrigue, one of his father’s friends and business partners, whom Sylvain used to occasionally see around the house when he was a kid. He’d seemed nice enough back then, but the association with his father was enough for Sylvain to decide that he wasn’t worth being polite to, and every time Rodrigue came over for dinner Sylvain would pick at his meal sullenly, refusing to talk, until his parents eventually decided it wasn’t worth trying to get Sylvain to behave and they stopped inviting Rodrigue over for dinner entirely.

None of that explains why Rodrigue is now staring at Felix like he’s just seen a ghost. Neither does it explain why Felix has suddenly gone pale and motionless next to Sylvain.

“Dad,” Felix says, and everything clicks into place in Sylvain’s brain like a freight train hitting him at full force.

Of course. _Of course._ Sylvain’s mind is suddenly running at full speed. They have the same fucking last name, he realizes. How many Fraldariuses could there possibly be traipsing around the general northeast of America? Sylvain has no idea how he never made the connection. They even look alike too, the same dark hair and the same regal features. Sylvain knows that Felix grew up in New England too but he didn’t know— Felix never said— _Fuck_. Sylvain is so fucking stupid.

In spite of Sylvain’s probably obvious state of shock Rodrigue decides to turn his attention to him, when it becomes apparent that Felix isn’t going to say anything else.

“You’re Sylvain, aren’t you? It’s been a long time,” Rodrigue says diplomatically, but his eyes are narrowed in a way that reminds Sylvain so much of Felix. “Condolences about your brother.”

“Uh, thank you,” Sylvain replies less than eloquently.

“I didn’t know you knew my son,” Rodrigue says, more of a question that a statement, and Sylvain thinks about Felix’s story about the two intertwined families, about the older brother who died in a car crash and the orphaned child who got taken in. He remembers it now. He remembers that whole saga being on the news, back when he was in college and trying his best to tune out the rare piece of local Massachusetts news that somehow still managed to reach his Facebook feed. Oh god. Dimitri is Dimitri fucking Blaiddyd, isn’t he? Sylvain has no idea how he’s missed it all this time.

“Yeah,” Sylvain says, trying his absolute best to pretend he isn’t totally freaking out right now. “Felix is—” and when he turns to look at Felix he realizes that he doesn’t looked stunned anymore. He looks downright terrified. Like if he doesn’t get out of here right now he’s going to fall to pieces, and it’ll take forever just to put him back together again. He’s never seen Felix look like this. He’s seen Felix angry, and upset, and pensive, and sad. He’s never seen Felix look so utterly _defenseless._

“I invited him,” Sylvain says, instead of whatever he was originally going to say. “And we were just about to leave.”

Rodrigue blinks, looking confused. “But your father’s just about to—”

“I’m not here for my father,” Sylvain interrupts. “It was nice seeing you again, Rodrigue.” And then he grabs Felix’s wrist and drags him the hell away from here.

It feels like it takes forever just to navigate their way through the crowd and back out the front doors, Sylvain studiously ignoring the looks of recognition and curious whispers that follow him as he goes. It takes forever for the valet to return with their shabby rented Subaru. All the while Felix’s expression remains shuttered, closed off. It stays that way up until Sylvain practically shoves Felix through the passenger side door, and then throws himself into the driver’s seat too so that they can drive off without looking back once. He drives them back down the driveway, down the lonely street leading up to the estate, keeps driving and doesn’t stop until he finds a parking spot that’s far away enough from the house that Felix finally looks like he can breathe again.

“Felix?” Sylvain says, after he puts the car into park and he can lean over to study Felix’s face. “Are you okay?”

Felix doesn’t say anything.

“Hey,” Sylvain says, reaching out to place a tentative hand on Felix’s shoulder. “Talk to me.”

Something about Sylvain’s touch seems to do the trick. Felix finally turns to look back at him, his expression crumbling open like a fortress under siege. Sylvain’s never seen him look this vulnerable before, and he’s completely unprepared for the flood of emotion that spills out inside of him – this fierce, protective urge that burns like a fire in his gut, threatening to scorch everything in its path. Sylvain thinks he would do anything just to get Felix to stop looking like that. He thinks he’d raze cities if it meant Felix would smile at him again.

“Sorry,” Felix finally gets out. Sylvain’s brow furrows in confusion.

“Why are you apologizing?” he asks.

“You didn’t get to talk to your dad,” Felix answers, and that fire inside of Sylvain flares even hotter, burns even brighter.

“Fuck that,” Sylvain says, so forcefully that Felix actually startles a little. “I don’t care about him. I care about you.”

Felix looks downright taken aback by Sylvain’s words. There’s a long moment of silence where all he does is stare back at Sylvain, eyes wide, before he turns away so that all Sylvain can see now is his profile, stark and lonely against the dark night sky in the window behind him.

“Are you okay?” Sylvain asks again.

“Yeah,” Felix says. He sucks in a breath, and Sylvain watches the rise and fall of his chest, strangely intimate in the dim car lighting. “My dad and I… Things have been better, these past couple of years, but they’re still – not great,” he tells Sylvain haltingly.

“Right,” Sylvain says. He gets it, he really does. Even after spending a full two days psyching himself up to see his father again it’d still been a shock to his system just to see that all-too-familiar face. He can’t imagine what he would’ve done if he’d just been walking around Manhattan and then seen his dad’s face in the crowd. He would’ve freaked out, that’s for sure. He would’ve completely fallen apart.

Felix sighs, and Sylvain watches some of the tension melt out of his shoulders as he exhales shakily. “I probably need to apologize to my dad at some point,” he mutters.

“That can wait,” Sylvain says, and Felix nods. Sylvain keeps on studying him, his gorgeous dark hair and the proud curve of his nose and the way his eyes shine in the low lighting.

“Can I hug you?” Sylvain asks. Felix finally turns back to look at him, his eyes the brightest thing in the car, in the entire world.

“Whatever,” he mutters, but he leans forward anyway to let Sylvain wrap him up in his arms. Sylvain can feel Felix breathing against him, so wonderfully strong and alive and real.

“I didn’t know our dads knew each other,” Felix says, his voice muffled against the crook of Sylvain’s shoulder.

Sylvain laughs wryly. “It’s fucking crazy, is what it is,” he says. Felix snorts.

“Can you imagine,” Felix says, “if we’d met as kids?”

And Sylvain _can_ imagine it. He wonders what Felix was like as a kid, before tragedy struck and ripped that innocence from his life. Was he the same way he is now, fussy and prickly and maddeningly stubborn? Or was he different? Carefree? Sensitive? A crybaby? Was he somehow all of those things at once? Would their lives have turned out differently if they’d known each other? Would they have found solace in each other, in their similarities, in the knowledge that neither of them were alone? Would they have turned out happier, healthier, less fucked up? Would they still have found their way to each other? Would they still be together? Sylvain wishes he knew the answers to those questions. He wishes he’d gotten to spend his entire life getting to know Felix. What a life that could’ve been. What a fucking marvel, the chance to grow up alongside Felix Fraldarius.

“I’m just glad I met you at all,” Sylvain replies. Felix doesn’t say anything. He just holds on tighter, and as far as Sylvain’s considered, that’s more than enough of an answer.


	7. epilogue: six months later

The actual best part about the Company opening night after party isn’t the drinks, or the food, or even the general celebratory mood. No, the actual best part of it all is getting to watch Felix squirm every time someone comes up to them and asks, “So, Sylvain, who’s your date for tonight?”

They’ve talked about it in advance, so Sylvain doesn’t hesitate to introduce Felix as his boyfriend, but Felix still looks like he’s praying for his imminent death ever single time another random person starts peppering him questions about where they met and what Felix does for a living. It gets even better when Felix then proceeds to hand out a name card with the number of his yoga studio (only because Annette had strong-armed him into doing so, insisting that the networking opportunity of a Broadway industry party is too good to pass up and so help her god if Felix jeopardizes their joint business venture just because he’s too awkward to know how to talk to potential clients properly), thus forcing him to have to actually try and execute something resembling a sales pitch. No matter how many times he does it over the course of the night it still inevitably makes him go all stiff and uncomfortable, which of course never fails to utterly delight Sylvain.

Not that Sylvain’s _that_ much of an asshole, because at some point he does eventually decide to take pity on Felix and chime in with his own enthusiastic testimonial of how the power of yoga helped to rehabilitate his shoulder after his dramatic fall on a Broadway stage. It feels like that happened a lifetime ago, but clearly nobody’s forgotten about that incident yet, because every time he brings it up it never fails to elicit a glimmer of interest, and the person in question always ends up taking Felix’s name card with promises to check the studio out.

“Thanks,” Felix says to Sylvain grudgingly, after the sixth time he’s told the story of how Annette singlehandedly whipped him back into shape.

“Aw, no need to thank me,” Sylvain replies, grinning widely. “I couldn’t just leave you to the wolves like that.”

“They’re _your_ industry coworkers,” Felix fires back.

“I know,” Sylvain says. “We’re all insufferable.”

Felix snorts and rolls his eyes. Still, regardless of any claims of insufferableness, Felix is here with him at the after party anyway, had even gone to see the show too even though he still insists on claiming to be “not a musical theatre person” (a statement that is, by this point, blatantly untrue, considering how Sylvain had caught him blinking furiously during “For Good” when they’d gone to see Wicked together two weeks ago). He seems to have enjoyed Company too, or so Sylvain thinks. It can be a little hard to tell with Felix sometimes.

Dimitri had definitel _y_ enjoyed it, though. He’d come down all the way from Cambridge to see the show with the rest of the gang, and had gotten along swimmingly with everyone, especially Ingrid, which Sylvain probably should’ve seen coming from a mile away. After the show he’d gripped Sylvain’s shoulder tightly and told him, voice thick with emotion, just how wonderful the show was, and thanked him profusely for getting him an opening night ticket. Dimitri’s a good guy, really. Sylvain’s glad that Felix has someone like Dimitri in his life, so painfully earnest and radiating sincerity at all times. It’s a shame Dimitri hadn’t been able to make it to the after party—he’d headed straight to Penn Station after the show was over to catch a late-night train back to Boston—but at least Ingrid and Dorothea are here too, lost somewhere in the crowd.

They’re both still a little bit mad at him, for not telling them about Miklan’s funeral or that he was even going back to his hometown at all. Especially Ingrid, who’s known Sylvain the longest out of any of his friends, and who knew him even back when he was still living under his parents’ roof. Mercedes had forgiven him easily, but no one holds a grudge quite like Ingrid or Dorothea do. Sylvain knows he deserves it, and granted, it’s been over half a year since then and they’ve mostly gotten over it by now, but that hasn’t stopped Ingrid from occasionally dropping a casual _well, at least I didn’t skip town to attend my brother’s funeral without bothering to tell my oldest friend_ as the ultimate argument winner.

But she’s also here at this party with him anyway. And she hadn’t gotten mad at him at all when Sylvain told her a couple weeks ago that he was thinking about moving in with Felix. So he thinks they’re going to be okay.

“Earth to Sylvain,” Felix says.

Sylvain blinks, vision clearing. Felix stares back at him, a wrinkle in his brow.

“Sorry,” Sylvain responds, smiling. “I was just trying to figure out where Ingrid and Dorothea went.”

“Right,” Felix says, visibly relaxing.

“What did you think I was thinking about?” Sylvain asks, sliding one arm around Felix’s waist to pull him closer. Felix looks away, hesitating.

“I thought you might still be upset about not getting cast,” he finally replies, still steadfastly refusing to meet Sylvain’s gaze.

"Oh,” Sylvain says.

Sometimes Sylvain thinks Felix is far too perceptive for his own good. He’s honestly still not used to having someone be this attentive to his feelings, to having Felix by his side, constantly forcing him to confront his emotions like an actual well-adjusted human being. Sylvain’s gotten so good at making himself not feel things that he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it sometimes – at least until Felix grabs him by this collar and tells him what an idiot he’s being. Because the truth is that Sylvain had been absolutely crushed after getting cut from the second round of callbacks; that he’d tried his best to put it behind him, but sitting in that chair earlier tonight, gazing up at the stage as the lights went up and the first familiar chords of the opening number started playing, he’d felt his heart hammer in his chest like it was being cleaved right into two.

The show was remarkable, of course, and the guy they’d eventually ended up casting in the role Sylvain had been gunning for was fantastic, but it still hurt. Of course it hurt. And standing here in the middle of the after party, as just one guest in a sea full of people, watching reporters swarm up to the cast to gush about their performances and ask for their perfect news-ready soundbites – well, it’s hard not to feel at least a little bit bitter.

But as the night wore on and Sylvain busied himself with talking to friends and coworkers, and indulging himself in the plentiful open bar, and laughing under his breath at Felix’s inelegant attempts at a sales pitch, he’d managed to put all that out of his mind. It became the easiest thing in the world instead to focus on the noise and the bustle and the music, on the feeling of Felix’s hand in his and the little bubble of joy that floated up in his chest every time he got to open his mouth and introduce Felix as his partner. On the fact that Felix is here with Sylvain at all, and somehow hasn’t fled for his life yet.

So, yes, Sylvain’s still sad about not getting cast in his dream show, because he’s only human. But if he’s completely honest with himself he’d mostly just wanted to play Bobby anyway. And sitting there, watching this new version of Bobbie belt out the high notes of “Being Alive”, he found himself wondering if that sentiment was even true anymore. If the things he saw in Bobby when he first found out about the show ten years ago were still true of Sylvain today. What was that one line again? _Alone is alone, not alive._ Sylvain thinks back to what it’d been like to sit there, and listen to that line be delivered right at him. It’d been a revelation, honestly. He hadn’t understood it before, not really, but now he thinks he does.

It’s still a breathtaking show, but it’s not for Sylvain anymore. Or rather, Sylvain doesn’t need it anymore, and thank fucking god for that. He thinks he likes being on the other side of it much better.

“I am a little sad,” Sylvain admits, both arms moving to encircle Felix’s waist now. “But I’ll get over it.”

“You would’ve been great,” Felix says, and Sylvain chuckles, because it’s not like Felix knows the first thing about casting for musical theatre. Still, he appreciates the sentiment.

“Thank you,” Sylvain murmurs, pressing his lips gently to Felix’s brow. “But I think it was for the best.”

Felix looks back at him, his gaze sharp and intense as he studies Sylvain’s features. Sylvain looks right back at him, letting Felix discern whatever might be showing up on his face right now. He lets himself bare it all for Felix, because that’s what being alive is actually all about, right? And Sylvain figured it out all by himself, no extra help needed.

“You’ll get the next role,” Felix says, in that quiet, confident tone of voice that’s made a believer out of Sylvain.

“Yeah,” Sylvain mutters, burying his face in Felix’s shoulder, and though they’re standing in the middle of a crowded party, surrounded by hundreds of people, Felix doesn’t budge, or move, or tell Sylvain to get off him. He just stands there and lets Sylvain breathe him in, the wonderfully familiar smell of his shampoo mingling with the scent of champagne on his breath.

“We should move in together,” Sylvain blurts out. He has no idea if Felix even hears him, because he barely feels him react. It’s only when Sylvain lifts his head that he sees the look on Felix’s face: disbelieving, maybe even a little bit shy.

“Are you drunk?” Felix asks.

“No!” Sylvain insists. “I just love you.”

Felix stares at him for a long time, unblinking.

“I mean,” Sylvain says, suddenly nervous, “you don’t have to say yes, obviously, I’ve just been thinking about it recently but we don’t have to—”

“Yes,” Felix interrupts. “Okay. Fine.”

Sylvain breaks out into the biggest grin he thinks he’s ever smiled in his life. And wondrously, miraculously, Felix smiles back at him.


End file.
